Prelude to the Chronicles
by Myshu
Summary: When young Crono starts his first day of school in Truce, his new classmates turn out to be more than he bargained for.
1. Chapter One

(It will be a long, hard journey that involves many worlds.  
But for now, the legend of the Phoenix begins, rather humbly, here...)

1.

_9/10/992:_

_Momma saz that to lern to rite bettur I got to rite down evryfig that hapens to me in thiz journal (she taut me how to spel that wurd tuday). I dont no how a stopid journal can mak me rite ani bettur but I'm goin to do it becus my mom meid me aniway. She meid me rite the deit at the top of the peig evry time I rite to. I duno y I haf to rite that ither if I'm jus goin to thro it uway latr and firgit._

_My name iz Crono. I'm 7 yers old and liv in Trus (I fink that is how itz speled) wif my mom. My mom iz a nis persun ecset wen she maks me rite STOPID journals. We jus muved here frum Marriville (I NO how to spel that becus mom shod me). Marriville iz fur uway from Trus I no becuse we had to tak the feri ovr the ce and it waz a long trip._

_Trus iz a net plac but I lik Marriville betur becus al my frendz ar ther lik Casi and Doti and Mat and hez cool. Mat iz the coolist persun I evr met and I waz sad to lev him bihind._

The deciduous thickets rippled with the sea breeze and tinkered in their dances with the tiny scraps of sunlight shed from voids in the cloud-freckled skies. Toads basking near a stoic lake lethargically relayed the melody to which the trees swayed and fawned, and rampant squirrels gingerly tiptoed from one trembling canopy limb to another. One twirled on its haunches and barked the warning call for an intruder: a boy blundering his way through the undergrowth.

His loose canvas shorts and slightly oversized blue tunic snagged his progress through the bramble patches, but the boy's reckless blundering down the practiced forest trail betrayed that he couldn't care less which thorns decided to prick his skin and which left him be. Wedging past two kissing oaks, he emerged from the natural obstacle course onto a secluded lakeside beach.

"Matt!!" he hailed.

Nearby, a slender lad exactly twice the hollering youngster's age started from his seat at the end of a petrified log. Catching his name, he smoothly sprang up, dusted off his back pocket, and discarded a softly smoking white stick from the balance of his lips into the glassy water. Exhaling a dragon-esque breath of pale smoke, he pivoted to spy a glance at the little boy.

"Yo, Crono. Little dude, where's the fire?" his slick tongue responded, picking up the smaller one's unusual state of haste.

Not one to let details escape him, the seven-year-old frowned disdain once he sighted Matthew and pointedly remarked, "In yer mouth, ag'in. I know what you were doin'. Momma says smokin' that stuff's bad for you."

"Yeah, well..." The teen bade his reply by dealing a falling kick to a pebble and watching it sail over the crystal waters. "Wat'chya out here for, little bro? It's a steamer out here today. Thought you'd be with Casy and Dottie fryin' eggs on the sidewalks, heh," he snorted at his own presumption.

Crono shrugged. "Casy already tried that on Aunt Rani's tin roof, but it just ran all over her birdhouse and made 'er yell at us."

"Then why ya out here? Bored already?" Matt guessed again. He squinted through the glaring shards of light that impaled the lake, as if scouring the depths for that which just deserted him.

The youngster glumly hung his head. "...We're movin'."

"Huh?" Matt snapped back to his "little bro," befogged.

Crono's gaze slid over to the shoreline, which mapped the edge of the water a few steps apart from his mud-caked boots. Twitching in their paranoid spasms on the other side of the liquid mirror were the summer's yield of tadpoles, lingering in the shallow reaches of the lake. Perhaps they were just as entranced as the boy by the idle spinning of Matt's snuffed out stick, teetering on the edge of buoyancy in the small pool. Letting his fixed stare relieve his mind of the words he was about to disclose, Crono's mouth meanwhile elaborated.

"...Momma's makin' us move. It's for real, this time. We're gonna go west and liv'in Truce."

Matt was struck dumb. "Whoa, for real? Why?"

"I-I dunno why," the youth was becoming aware that the words were sticking somewhere down his throat, so he rattled off the rest quickly. "I just know we're leavin' next week, and tha's all. Momma didn't say why."

His capacities were fogged by shock and… other substances, but the message gradually dawned on the elder lad. "...Truce, huh?" Matt echoed, at length.

Crono swallowed. "...Yeah."

The kid expressed a thoughtful smirk as this was digested, and in a adolescent fit of sympathy, he cursed. "Shit," Matt spat as he sank back onto the log. "That sucks."

There was a finality to his vulgar language that suppressed the need for further words. The two absorbed the tranquil scenery for a pause.

"...Casy and them know yet? 'bout you movin'?"

The boy bobbed his twig-combed pile of red spikes in a nod.

Matt cast a humph over the lake like a net of disgruntlement. "Well'thn that's that, eh? Gonna be a real city-slicker now, aren't'cha?"

The little one's eyes started to burn with tears. "But I don't wanna!" he wailed, and his fists obstinately buried themselves in his tunic pockets, as if he could anchor himself to the earth and never be forced to relocate.

"It ain't fair...!" he began to cry. As futile as it was, Crono turned away to shield his face, lest he look like a sniveling child to his older friend.

The teen, moved by the display, sprang to the boy with a sharp rebuke. "Hey you, stop 'hat!"

"...It jus' ain't fair...!" Crono went on anyway, verging on an outright bawl. "I don't wanna have to move, she can't make me jus' git up and move away jus' like that! I got friends here and I t'ought e'rybody liked me and I don't wanna go to no stupid city where no one's gonna be as cool as you or Casy or Dottie and--"

"Hey!" Stern hands seized Crono's shoulders and gruffly spun him around. Matt met the boy's tear-streaked face with, "You stop that right now, I said!"

"--B-But-!" Crono hiccupped, shaken by the aggressive outburst.

Matt wasn't about to condone whining, however. "--No 'but's! You gonna go off to that city and be a cryin' little wussy boy? Huh?! D'jer momma raise you up that way? How you ever gonna grow to be a warrior like that Cyrus guy you keep talkin'bout if yer a wussy cry-baby??"

Crono's loud objections tapered into piteous whimpering. "I-I don't g-gonna keep cryin'... I can't help it..." he stammered out whatever was on the fringes of coherency. He was ashamed to be caught squalling like so in front of his personal role model, whose motto was a simply stated, "big boys don't cry." The child battled to scrub his face dry with the scruff of his clothes.

Matt backed off and mulled over his extreme reaction. After reconsidering himself, he finally relented. "Aw, all right. I'm sorry, bro. Look..."

He scavenged through the crevices in his own garment and retrieved a small rock, its irregular dimensions patched with sickly green hues. Bending to his knees to level himself with the sobbing kid, he lightly jarred Crono's shoulder to gain his attention and presented him the rock.

"Here. You take it."

The senseless sniffling finally abated, and wide, glistening eyes beheld the unattractive hunk of stone, as if in awe of it. "B-but... It's yer lucky rock," Crono realized.

"Yeah, and now it's yers. Goin' to the city and all, you're gonna need all the luck you can git--am I right, little bro?" Matt flippantly proposed.

Crono stared at his older companion for some time, stupefied by both his abrupt shift in nature and at the very notion of being allowed to keep the prized "lucky rock"--an item with quite a back story, and several smashed windows in its history.

"Can I really have it?" he was nerved to ask, even as his dirty paws reached to claim the treasure.

"Yeah, sure." Matt casually tossed it off and rose from the clay bank.

Crono fondled the stone between his fingers, admiring it. "Cool..."

His fervent scrutiny was jolted by a rough pat on the back. "You'll take care of it, won'tchya, little dude?" Matt addressed him.

Instantly remembering that he was entrusted with a sacred item, Crono stuffed it into the safety of his pocket and assured with a proud grin, "You bet!"

"That's good," Matt began, as if abandoning the topic in favor of resuming his previous pastime. "Now git on outta here," he ushered the redhead off as he settled back onto his wooden perch. "I'll see ya later."

The little boy took his cue to leave and started to waddle off through the unforgiving weeds. "Okay... Thanks, Matt."

Through the scores of underbrush gradually distancing the two, Crono could barely overhear his friend mumbling in frustrated bits.

"Now where'd I put my weed...?"

_Yep Mat waz cool. But now I'm al ulon eksept me and my mom and I dont wana go to skul tumorow becus I dont no aniwun thir and I wont haf frends. I mis my frends at home. I mis them ulot._

_Wel I ges I shud go to bed now so I wont mis ani skul wer Im goin to lern to rite betur so mabi mom wont mak me rite thes dub journals no mor._

_-Crono_

"This one?"

A flash of excitement cleared the face of the little girl questioned. She stretched tiny, eager fingers towards the indicated prize, a cardboard box sealing precious cookies of the chocolate-chip variety. Burbling murmurs issued from her lips, augmenting the giddy gestures.

"Oh, so you want some of these, eh? Sure thing, tiger," the man supporting her in his burly arms extended his free hand towards the overhead pantry, where mentioned cookies were being detained.

"Make her say the word, Taban," interrupted a chiding voice from the woman planted in one of the sparingly arranged kitchen chairs. The thick blue curls crowning her head draped over her lowered eyebrows in wisps as she steadily leered at her husband.

The man, a tall, sandy-haired character, wavered under her icy monitor, and he uneasily shifted his childish burden from one arm to the other. "Aw com'on Lara, it's just one cookie. Don't be so strict."

Lara sighed heavily and fell onto her elbow, which luckily had grounded itself on the dinner table. "But those are reward cookies, sweetie, and she's not supposed to get one unless she says something, and she hasn't... ugh, I'm too tired to argue it..." her sentence aborted mid-way and degenerated into exhausted grumbling.

"Well, I think she deserves a cookie today." Taban leaned back on his hips in order to meet the gaze of the child he was holding. "Don't you, sport?" he directly asked.

The initially returned stare was blank, then it reflected confusion, and Taban could sense past the disproportionately large spectacles tacked onto her face that his daughter was disappointed she didn't have her cookie yet. His heart softened to the little girl.

"Aw Lara, just one? Com'on."

The woman flicked an apathetic wrist towards the stored goods. "Fine, spoil her."

"Hey, there we go." Taban was cooing more-or-less to the child as he finally obtained the box of treats, fished out a coin of dough, and playfully wiggled the snack above the girl's nose, evoking a bundle of delighted giggles. The brawny man shortly chortled, relinquished the cookie, set the child on the wood-planked floor, and proceeded to stretch his back. The girl limply plopped onto her rear and began munching away blissfully, right at the spot.

"See?" the husband grunted as he flexed the sore muscles rimming his shoulders. "It's good to treat her once in a while. We're not animal trainers, ya know."

"Oh, what are we going to do?" Lara began, her disposition far from the simplistic mindset of her offspring, whose ills and despondency could be cured with a mere pastry. "I can't understand my little girl at all! She could write a novel if you gave her a sheet of paper and a pen but she still can't say a single sentence out loud, much less 'cookie'!"

Taban reflected his wife's worries with a frown. "Just give her some time, Lara. She can learn to talk again, just like all the other kids. She just needs a little more time."

"She's seven years old, Taban. Seven years old." Her weighty emphasis on the words crippled Taban's reassuring logic. "Any normal girl her age would be trouble just to shut up! What's wrong with her?"

Lara's mate shuffled his feet sheepishly. "Well, on the bright side, at least it's always nice and quiet around here," he cracked a poor joke.

"You think this is funny?!" Lara snapped abrasively, and Taban checked his tongue.

"I was just sayin'," he reclined on his former argument, "Maybe this will all pass like it did last time. The doctor said it's just a bit of a relapse--"

At mention of the physician an indignant flare compelled Lara to launch from her seat, but her leaden legs anchored her to the chair. Muddled by this crucial hindrance, she elevated her voice instead, vocally compensating for the handicap. "--Oh, yes, the doctor! Let's just listen to the doctor, shall we? The same doctor who said our baby girl was... a... a retard! Let's just listen to that rubbish!" her raving careened into a cynical tangent.

Assuming the brunt of her sarcasm was a comment on his gullibility, Taban felt personally insulted. "Autistic," he attempted to correct the crude terminology. "He never said 'retarded' and you damn well know it. Don't start throwing blame around."

Discouraged by his tone, Lara discarded the scapegoat and was reduced to crying for pity's sake. "I'm so sick of this! I feel like my life's falling apart around me! Just when that whole stupid incident with the book is gone forever and things are just going back to normal..."

Teardrops welled in her eyelids as she rambled on. "...Then there was that forsaken accident and I can't walk anymore, a-and..." She dramatically threw her hand down towards the child. "...she hasn't spoken a word since... I can't even get up and make my own breakfast anymore, Taban!" Lara wailed in despair.

"I can't even..."

Whatever was going to fill that space was rejected by a fit of self-loathing sobs, and Lara buried herself into her arms, the overbearing circumstances she just recounted crumbling her spirit.

Taban grimaced with a pang of compassion. His heavy hand landed delicately on her shoulder. "It's alright, Lara. Things'll be okay..."

Meanwhile the girl, being satisfied as she was with her cookie and thus oblivious to most of this, refrained from her half-devoured treat once the room's temper had quieted. A bemused stare regarded her mother, sulking over the kitchen table, and her father standing at her side, trying to offer consolation.

It was not outwardly apparent that she understood any of these happenings, but the little girl did display empathy to a degree, for the next event to startle the emotionally frail Lara was a tapping on her knee. She peered through a veil of drooping hair at her daughter, who wobbled up and humbly proffered the remainder of her chocolate-chip morsel.

The red-eyed woman repressed any further outbursts with a sniffle. "What, dear?"

Taban quickly picked up the hint, however, and warmly smiled. "Oh look honey, she wants you to have her cookie."

Lara shakily clasped the stale baked treat, turned it over with an ill snort, and moaned quite audibly while aimlessly thrusting it away, "I don't want a cookie..."

Her daughter recoiled a step and her arms shrank up to her chest, like a puppy cringing at its master's violent swings. She then caught the following shriek of pure exasperation.

"...I want a normal life!!"

And Lara collapsed to weep once more. Taban couldn't do anything or supply a single word, spare a deeply rooted sigh that vented sympathy, to alleviate her grief. The child, displaced by the dramatic reaction, shot muddled glances between her mother and the shattered fragments of cookie that met their fate on the kitchen floor.

She sagged to the ground again, defeated, and began to cry.


	2. Chapter Two

2.

_9/11/992:_

_I had a funi drem las nite and I want to rite it down befor I furgit. I dremd thir waz this lady. Shi waz pridi wif purpl hiar and red wengs lik thos ainjuls my mom talks ubut but I dont fink shi waz an ainjul. I uzali dont remimbir ceing colir in my drems but this tim I did remimbir and I remimbir shi saiz funi wurds to me that I dont no. "Wach fir the my si ki" iz wat shi said. I dont fink I haf a si ki and I dont no wat that iz and I dont no if I evin spel it rit. It sond lik thoz funi forin wurds but I dont no ani forin wurds I jus no gar-de-an and thats hard enuf._

_Got to go to skul now mabi I wil rite latr and wen I git thir I can ask a techur wat a si ki iz becus mom dont no iter and techurz ar smart pepul so I herd so they shuld no._

"Nooo...!!"

Last-minute thoughts were being forcefully handled by the middle-aged woman towing her stubborn son to school by the wrists. The seven-year-old's plowing heels drew long furrows across the front yard of Truce Omega Primary School, thereby stunting their trek to the front door to an inchworm's pace.

The institution bore no resemblance to the young boy's imaginative speculations. It was actually a small, dusty shamble of neglected paint on aged wooden walls. Its rotting shell was punctured by sliding windows framed into a washy bleach and propped ajar with some decidedly vestigial hardback volumes. A tin overhang sheltered the homely front step, which was furnished with a cheesy welcome mat embroidered with, "Welcome to Class," as well as a small army's load of grimy footprints. The humble establishment dwelled on a parched street corner whose arid landscaping was dotted with sparse and far-flung oases of patch grass. Excluded from the wasteland were colonies of uncurbed weeds spawning around the premises, their hardy roots methodically toiling to undermine the concrete foundation. To complete the scene, a rust-clad swing set grew out of the salty earth, serenading the breeze with its grating voice and clanging chains.

The youth wasn't about to go near it.

"No!!" he strained against his parent's will, clenching his teeth and grinding whatever leverage he could into the weak dirt. "I wanna go back!"

The mother, however, was drained of her patience to stall. She froze dead in her plodding and whirled to sting him with her rebuff.

"Crono Wayne," she pulled out the ever-lethal middle name, "That's enough!! You're going to get your act together and go to school, whether you like it or not!! You're going to get an education, young man, if I have to tie a rope around you like a mule and drag your sorry behind to class every single day!"

The boy pressed his luck by seizing the opportunity to sit on the ground and protest any further progress. He stuck up his lip and pouted.

"No."

"Arg...!!" his mother growled like a roused bear, and before Crono was delivered a second chance to defy her he was taken off his guard and hoisted over the woman's shoulder like a sack of potatoes, thrashing and squealing complaint.

"Ahh! Lemme go!"

"Fat chance, mister! You're going to school!" was the motherly verdict.

Resistance from that point was a meager few kicks and the drumming of balled fists on his mother's back, neither of which had any ability to forestall the inevitable. The entire charade had, however, expended enough time to make the young lad considerably late. While from his parent's viewpoint it was "better late than never," undoubtedly Crono would have preferred the latter.

As things were he was toted into the building's threshold, and Crono's first day of school in Truce began.

* * *

Joseph was just sketching in the finishing touches on his latest work, "Shark Monster Eats Miss Holt," as the subject of his portrait paced across the front of the room, striking rhythmic cracks onto the blackboard with her chalk holder. His one attentive ear monitored the going-ons and cued him when to start chanting.

"Okay class, once more."

"One times one is one... Two times one is two..." a dreary chorus was raised from the twelve captive students, all confined to the four rows of desks spaced down the length of the room.

Of this evenly-divided group of boys and girls, five utilized the handicap of the answers etched out in plain chalk straight ahead, a few more labored to babble the lines off by memory, and those such as Joseph, who could recite the multiplication tables backwards, forwards, and while comatose, off-handedly murmured what was necessary to crawl the procession forward and let his mind idly venture into space.

He detailed some extraneous drops of blood around his instructor's corpse, set his pencil aside, and briefly admired his artwork. Meanwhile, the next leg of drills had initiated at Miss Holt's steady command.

"Okay, now for the 'two's'..."

Joseph was almost shaken from his seat by the eruption of groans and the domino-rally of thuds from foreheads striking hardwood. The teacher was untouched by this display and continued as she would, clearing the dark green board with her eraser and swiftly adapting the provided numerals for the next lesson.

Fortunately, a ray of hope mediated for the hapless students in the form of a timid rapping on the obscured side of the door. From the far left end of the room a pig-tailed little girl's head popped up and perkily announced, "Someone's here, Miss Holt!"

"All right," several low echoes revered the break in class.

"Yes!"

"Cool."

"Come in," Miss Holt bid the stranger inside, not deterred from her writing.

Classes anticipated moments like these. Usually messages throughout the facility were exchanged through a relay of willing helpers--often kids who volunteered to abandon their assignments and run the halls for a whole day. Of course, a duty like that was reserved only for the obedient and trustworthy, so that excluded a giant percentage of those who would have leapt at the ticket to ditch school.

The arrival of a message most often signified one of two things: the teacher was about to be summoned away to leave her students unattended (the cause was irrelevant to the children, for they relished the diversion all the same), or grade slips were to be distributed, as they were every six or seven weeks, in order to inform the children of their... academic progress. The latter was given less than comical regard, and most loaned their prayers to the former, although both guaranteed that the lesson would be interrupted, which was always welcome.

The door crept open and a boy uneasily snuck his way in, as if he were trespassing on a neighbor's lawn and keeping peeled eyes for the watchdog. He brandished a pencil box in his hands and a yellow paper slip, which he delivered to Miss Holt after feebly wandering to the front of the room. His wide gaze inhaled the foreign environment.

The alert students fixed their eyes on the newcomer. Instead of passing the message off and darting away, as was customary, the boy dumbly stood by, crippled by the mannerisms of one who is lost, as the teacher skimmed over the note's scratchy handwriting.

He was strange. Joseph peered at him quizzically, vexed by an inability to recognize him. He was within Joseph's age group, judging by appearances (by the same method he could easily cite some in the same room that tragically weren't). He was short and well fed, not pudgy or scrawny, but actually quite fit and able. His healthy boyish complexion was marred by a strip of light freckles crossing the bridge of his nose. Eyes sharp with the hue of blue ice suited his sea-colored tunic, one arguably a size too large. Under similar questioning were the pale canvas shorts hanging below his knees.

Detracting from all the aforementioned was his hair--unruly spikes of bright crimson arrayed in such a reckless fashion upon him that he could be mistaken for a medieval court-jester. The white headband reeling a few tufts away from his eyes did little good.

"Hel-lo, circus is in town," murmured an older kid near the tail of the rows, and ripples of snickers grew from him.

Miss Holt's brows wrinkled into perplexity and her gaze bounced from the patiently waiting boy to the note slip and back. Her countenance soon melted into a pleasant smile.

"Well young man, I suppose you're in the right place then." Padding her fingertips on her chest, she introduced, "I'm Miss Holt. Welcome to my class." She spun and started to speak to the whole group. "Everyone! I'd like your attention, please. We have a new student here today."

Before too many surprised exclamations could ring up the instructor projected her announcement over them. "I'd like you to meet Cruno. He'll be joining us from now on."

A somewhat indignant shadow cast over the boy who was lured into the spotlight. "That's Crono," he corrected the absurd pronunciation.

"Oh." Miss Holt readjusted her composure and checked the yellow slip again. "Sorry. Well Crono, take a seat. There's room in the back behind Joseph." She indicated a vague area somewhere near the rear shelves and returned to the blackboard.

Crono gathered his cardboard box close to him and blindly meandered down the nearest aisle, hoping to hone in on a vacant desk and duck out of view before the incessant staring from his new classmates began to unnerve him. An inconsiderate leg stretched across the narrow void, hooked its heel on the chair directly across, and barred his path. Crono scuffed to a halt at the obstacle and lifted his face to the one hindering his way.

He was an elder boy. Long, slender bones comprised the awkward form that reclined into his spacious dark shirt and denim pants thick with large folds. Dull blonde hair capped his head and furred his forearms, which were lazily draped over the back of his chair. His misty gray eyes coldly burned Crono--a contradictory characteristic that was furthered by the lad's sardonic grin.

"Um, excuse me," the redhead politely attempted to bypass him.

Not even the intimidating smile shifted.

A peek around her shoulder enabled Miss Holt to throw a curved warning. "Darren."

At the sound of his name, the rebellious character removed his blockade and allowed Crono to finally pass, but not without a contemptuous snort and a handful of low chuckles.

Crono maneuvered to the furthermost desk and slid into it with a sigh of relief, glad that minor ordeal had receded. He started at the pointed jump of Miss Holt's speech.

"Now tell me the answers on the board down the row in order. Start with you, Liquel."

Far across the assembly of desks Crono heard a boy pipe up from the seat nearest the exit. He called out some number--probably what Miss Holt wanted to hear, just as likely something off the top of his head, for all Crono understood. Whatever it was, the teacher seemed to consent to it, for she allowed the student placed just behind him to give yet another number, and then the next in line did just the same.

Crono quickly figured that from where he was located there would be quite some time before he had to answer, himself. This was perfectly fine in his books, because he felt he needed at least a minute or two to get comfortable in what was sure to be a place he'd be spending a great deal of his life in from now on.

The walls were coated in faded blue pastel. A series of cabinets numbered with iron digits lined the room's left side, shelves stuffed with classroom miscellaneous cluttered the back, the teacher's desk was posted at the left corner near a hinged window, and beyond that a front-facing chalkboard dominated the scene's focal-point. Another, less conspicuous one clung to the right wall, and to the front-right corner the door was found, which Crono was already acquainted with.

Miss Holt herself wasn't a terribly striking character. A flowery blue dress outlined her slim figure and an ornate pin bound her dark hair into a shiny bun. It wasn't one of those "grouchy old lady" hair buns, which for ages Crono had associated with Casy's screeching Aunt Rani back in Marriville, but rather a "plain, orderly lady" type bun that fit onto Miss Holt a whole different stereotype. Her eyes were narrow and her face and nose pointed, but disregarding this she radiated a youthful, warm air that had yet to be stained by age and bitterness. She must not have been teaching very long.

The room didn't have an extremely complicated layout, and when Crono encountered a fluffy kitty poster underscoring the wall clock in all its cute glory, he decided he had explored enough. Turning to something more immediate, he inspected the battered pencil container that the school secretary had leased out to him moments before shipping him off to this cell. It was of tough cardboard, worn at the corners and riddled with crude color doodles. Peeling back the top lid, he spied his own name in permanent marker on the underside, such label indefinitely personalizing the abused box... Or rather he would have believed, had Crono not uncovered the names of other, forgotten ones, scrubbed into oblivion to yield for the most recent owner. From what letters he could still make out, Crono learned that the last owner of his box was someone named "Justin."

Inside were, debatably, the bare essentials for a primary schoolchild: two pencils, one stick of glue, and four crayons. One of the pencils appeared no better than if it had been fed to a wild wolf, the adhesive stick had been embalmed in its own glue, and technically, there were only three and a half crayons. The red one was missing its bottom half, and if Crono wasn't mistaken... were those teeth marks? Picking it up to scrutinize, he realized that it wasn't even a real red crayon. It was one of those half-baked "red-violet" ones.

A spit, "Psst," forced Crono to divert his attention from his high-quality supplies and seek the boy swinging about in the desk ahead.

"Hey," he whispered below the scope of an eavesdropper. A stuck thumb pinpointed the guy who had obstructed Crono's route to his desk. "Don't mind Darren; he's a jerk."

The boy opened his palm beneath the rim of his desk, offering a secluded handshake. "I'm Joseph. You can just call me Joey, though. Come talk to me at lunch; I'll show ya around."

Unsure how else to respond, Crono accepted Joseph's friendly hand and returned a lopsided smile. "I'm Crono."

"Yeah, I know," he shot back simply, and swiveled to face forward again.

In the meantime, the tide of questions had rolled onto a child who was, for all Crono had deciphered until this point, completely mute. For a disconcerting pause after being prompted, no answer came, and when jeering snickers began to spring up Crono at once started to pay notice to class events, for he detected that something was amiss.

Miss Holt gestured to the problem under consideration at the board and clarified it for the benefit of that person whose turn had not yet been fulfilled. "Are you listening? Two plus three. What is it?"

Still, nothing. Crono was baffled. What was going on?

In all directions his peers were expressing varied reactions. Some were chuckling or snickering behind clamped mouths, but at the same time there were those who didn't find anything funny, and instead visibly and audibly conveyed frustration.

"Just say it, Booger!" the kid three seats down burst out, his arms punctuating the exclamation by flailing outward. This was rewarded with laughter.

Crono was instantly flushed with relief. It didn't appear to be him that they were egging on, which was good, because he didn't want to cast a first impression of being too stupid to acknowledge his turn.

He fished around to find just who was stirring up the commotion, anyway, and by following the eyes of others he ran onto a little girl floundering in a deep corner of the room. Her head was hung low and her shoulders hunched over her neck, as if she were trying to shrink into her body like a turtle, but one arm was calmly held raised, as if she were pressing some nonverbal response.

Miss Holt impatiently folded her arms. "I can't hear you. Do you know the answer? Two plus three. Go ahead and try to say it, this time."

The girl smirked and waved her hand around, trying to signal something while at the same time sparing herself the trouble of speech. And, as if by reading her, the meaning behind it all hit Crono. All her fingers were exposed. She was trying to show that the answer was five.

The boy's expression contorted with bemusement. Why doesn't she just say so, if she knows the answer?

Whether or not anyone else was clued in to this quirk of hers, Crono wasn't sure. Just as the teacher was set to move on regardless, Darren lifted his voice and informed, "She says four, Miss Holt."

The girl blinked, certainly startled, and her hand fell slack at her side. Appalled, she gaped at Darren, who cracked up in snickers. Crono was near objection. She didn't mean to say four! The answer was five, and Crono knew she knew it.

As muffled giggles started to permeate the warm autumn air already choking the room, Crono learned something else. Darren knew it, too. The whole class knew what the answer was, and what she meant to say, and what Darren put in her mouth despite the correct number. This quiet girl was the butt of a joke.

But would Miss Holt buy it?

Unfortunately, yes, as she was more geared towards accomplishing the lesson in general than towards trying to squeeze blood out of a turnip and forcing a single word from that little girl. The woman's backside graced the students as her chalk-wielding arm methodically plotted the next set of questions.

A long sigh. "Four isn't right. Lizzy, do you know the answer?"

The head of the next row smugly arrogated the glory of declaring, "It's five, ma'm." More chuckles and mocking comments were dispensed at the silent child's expense, and the lesson moved on as it had before.

Crono slouched into his chair, dumbfounded. Joseph--er, Joey was right--Darren was a real jerk. How could Miss Holt allow that? How come nobody else spoke up to defend that girl? Surely everyone understood precisely what had come to pass. Even Crono grasped the concept, and he knew he wasn't exactly the brightest apple on the tree.

A long glance beheld the one who had endured that humiliating feat without so much as a peep passing her lips. Even to her looks, she was odd. Her tiny frame hid inside an oversized yellow shirt, its long sleeves defying common sense and the blazing heat outdoors. Her cream-colored shorts matched Crono's in style and material, and perhaps even in size, as they, too, didn't appear to be a very snug fit. Limp purple hair was sliced short at her shoulders, and fighting for balance on her small nose was what Crono heartily believed to be the biggest pair of glasses he had ever seen anybody so little wear. Perhaps even anybody at all, at that rate. Those, like everything else she wore, obviously didn't fit.

Melancholy blue eyes turned to him, and when the fact that she was being stared at sank in, her cheeks reddened furiously and she retreated further into her heavy garments, trying in much vain to be invisible to the world around her.

Crono winced away from her, a blush threatening to overshadow his freckles as well. He didn't mean to stare so long. He needed to concentrate on the lesson, or he might miss his turn. Try as he might, however, all that he had just observed didn't escape his mind so easily, and his wheel of thought persistently turned back to that strange kid.

What a sad little girl...


	3. Chapter Three

3.

Lunch commenced on its free time, and students poured out the schoolhouse's back door into a spacious courtyard that reeked of early autumn grass. Shoddy picnic tables rose out of the soil like the nearby birch that shed fickle shadows over their coarse wooden planks. The knotted tree was displaced from its deceased and processed counterparts and balanced on the peak of a soft slope that declined from the level picnic grounds onto a weedy lawn, strewn with various implements of sport and deflated rubber balls. 

The benches riddling the yard were gradually crammed with an ocean of hungry kids, near sixty to count. Into the din entered a disoriented Crono, upset with the notion of retreating from one chaotic setting to another. His mother hadn't the foresight to prepare him a portable lunch, but rather abandoned him with a couple of coins, with which he was supposedly able to purchase one. 

But where, and how, could he do that? And once he had a lunch, where could he sit down to eat it? 

As he boggled himself with these concerns, a waving arm pierced the waterline of children's heads, accompanied by a beckoning call that struggled over the static of dozens of simultaneous conversations. 

"Hey Crono!" 

Tuning to that voice, Crono found Joey signaling him over to a long table adjacent to the border fence. Relieved that he had some sort of guide to follow, he swam through the traffic and encountered the boy calling him. Joey gestured for him to take a seat, and Crono settled at the edge of the bench, just across from his new friend. 

Now that he had a suitable opening to do so, Crono inspected the helpful lad. Joseph carried an unassuming profile. His hair was murky brown, as if tailored to his dark eyes, and combed unobtrusively short. A plain, somewhat solemn effect defined his character. 

Joey claimed a paper sack off the table and began to rifle through it. "So you're still alive, huh?" was his conversation-starter. Smiling as he wasn't, Joey's jocular implications were missed, and Crono stared at him blankly for a moment, his wits lost to the question. 

"Hey, it's that new kid!" an oversized boy two places over from Joey broke in. His collection of freckles were nearly transparent, and his greasy, barbed hair matched the creamy hue of whichever doughnut filling topped the right shoulder of his flaring red shirt. 

The shrimpy kid neighboring Crono finally took notice of someone next to him with a mild start. "Hey..." he drawled in pip-squeak while peering at the redhead past his rounded glasses. 

"Aren't'cha gonna introduce us, Joey?" a third boy from the far end of the table prompted. 

"Yeah sure." Joey casually took on the last's suggestion. His open hand presented the boy of everyone's current interest. "You guys, this is Crono." 

Once he assumed the center of the party's attention, a diffident fit left Crono disarmed against whatever Joey was about to do. The kid's extended hand floated towards the bespectacled individual on Crono's side. 

"Crono, this is Haru." 

Haru offered a wayward grin that unsheathed a disjointed canine tooth. "Nice ta meetchya." 

"Haru's a wise guy. We call him Brains," Joey furthered. 

"Brainiac," filtered through some of the sandwich wedged in another boy's mouth. 

"Anus-face," was Haru's practiced retort. 

Gesturing to the instigator, Joey continued. "And this is Charlie, Haru's twin brother." 

Catching the flicker of amazement that crossed Crono's face, he elaborated. "I know; they don't look a thing like each other." 

How true that was. Haru's impish, nerdy motif was dwarfed by the young man of his relation. As they sat at that very table, Charlie's larger bones hoisted him almost foot over his sibling's head, and he carried this bonus height with the confidence of an athlete. 

Charlie swallowed his scrap of sandwich and picked up that line of thought. "...Yeah, Haru looks more like mom." 

This earned a wad of paper chucked in his direction. 

Joey carried on to the guy adorned in red and doughnut. "Here's Keith. He's pretty cool." 

Keith inhaled the remainder of his pasty and contributed a wave. "Hey new dude." 

Next was, "And he's Liquel, school-famous for his potty-mouth." 

A foreign accent spewed from the ruddy-skinned, dark-haired kid in words resembling, "You're damn right I--" 

"--Shut it, Liquel," Haru snuffed him out. 

The last link of the group held himself up and stole the spotlight with a pretentious outburst. "And I'm Gary--the coolest guy in school! Ask anybody!" 

Haru melodramatically fell onto his elbow and rolled his eyes. "Oh brother..." 

"What?" Charlie glanced up, mistakenly summoned from his distracted thoughts. 

Keith was poised to shoot the cocky young character down. "Yeah, Gary's awesome. Did you see him after class Friday cleaning out the toilets?" 

Gary met everyone's laughter with an indignant smirk. "Yeah, well... My dad can kick your dad's butt any day, Keith!" he tactfully conjured a threat to divert the topic. 

The heavy lad feigned quivering out of fright. "Ooo, scary! Your dad! Hahahaha!" 

Joey commented to Crono in an aside, "Gary's dad's an 'architectural engineer'--whatever that means." 

Whatever, indeed. 

"But it must be pretty important, the way Gary goes on about it. His dad works for the castle, y'know." 

The castle? 

Gary literally sucked in his pride, flung a swirl of maroon hair away from his hazel eyes, and sat down again. "Yeah, you just laugh. You'll take it back one day," he muttered. 

Charlie reeled the conversation back on track. "So new kid, what's your story?" he wondered. 

"Yeah yeah, where ya from?" Haru narrowed his sibling's enquiry. 

Crono started, nearly unaware he had been prompted to speak. "Um... I'm from Marriville." 

"Well numb nuts, that tells us a lot. Where the hell is that?" Liquel pressed. 

After he had stared through the shock over Liquel's... colorful diction, Crono made an attempt to explain. "It's an island." The direct question received a blunt answer. 

"...And?" Keith impatiently gestured for more. 

"Never heard of it," Charlie spoke for the majority while reaching for a cheese cracker off Haru's napkin. 

"You're one of those 'quiet kids,' aren't ya newbie?" Gary presumed with a skeptical leer at the redhead. 

The reply required a second of thought. "No, not really," Crono answered softly. 

"Aw, cut him a break guys. He's new," Joey reasoned. Then, in another note to the shy boy, "Don't worry, you'll fit right in. Eventually. It just takes a while for _normal_ people to get used to this freak show." He sardonically indicated the gathered company. 

Among the offended chuckles was Haru's mocking retort. "Oh ha-ha Joey, and you're a perfect peach yourself." 

"Mmm... peaches." Keith drooled. 

Catching the hungry glint in his new friend's eyes as he anxiously twisted around in his seat, Joey arrived at an obvious conclusion. 

"You hungry? They sell stuff over there." He directed Crono's gaze across the vista of munching students to a modest picnic table manned by a large, apron-clad woman. 

Coins secure in hand and destination in mind, Crono sprang from his place like a bloodhound kicking off a chase. His eager jump was thwarted by Joey snatching the rim of his shirt sleeve. 

"--But don't!" he interjected. To answer Crono's baffled look, he explained, "Burritos today." 

"Ikk." Liquel played as if he were going to retch. "Nasty burritos here. Definitely not for eating." 

"Make good doorstops, though," Charlie pointed resourcefully. 

Buying their advice instead of the lunch lady's burritos, Crono hesitantly replaced himself in front of Joey. His expression pleading, "What do I eat now?" he watched his informative friend edge forward across the countertop and drop into a confidential tone. 

"Listen, I think somebody's got to tell you this, before you get hurt. There's a couple of ground rules around here." 

Crono blinked, alarmed. Ground rules? 

"Yeah, there's two kinda rules in this joint," Haru helpfully volunteered to explain. "The kind the teachers give ya--" 

"--And the kind they don't." Charlie wrapped up. 

"Those're the ones that bite you in the ass, man," Liquel offered a dread warning. 

"Wha'd'you mean?" Crono was suddenly wary of the sobered conversation. 

Joey juggled the appropriate words. "Well, if you wanna walk out of here in one piece, you've got to be careful. Don't... step on the wrong people's toes, know what I mean?" 

Unfortunately, he hadn't a clue. "No..." 

Joey hoisted himself above the populace and scanned the crowds. "I'll explain. See those girls over there? At that table?" 

Pointing revealed the target: six girls stationed around their own bench, consorting with each other in the dialect of giggles, shrieks, and whispers that was trademarked by their gender. 

"Yeah," Crono confirmed. "What about 'em?" 

"That's Amy's table. She's in the middle, there, with the blonde hair." 

Amy seemed tall and fair, with healthy skin and a long, shiny ponytail that danced in jerks behind her as she tossed her head amidst chatter. 

"Amy's the most popular girl here. All the cool girls hang out with her 'cause she acts like her older sister, who's a second-schooler. She says her mom lets her wear makeup and stuff, just like older girls." 

Shifting to the pair on Amy's right, Joey described some of her fellows. "That's Lizzy and Stacy beside her. They're the ones both wearin' pink bows with white polka dots. That's 'cause they're best friends and always hang out together and wear the same kinda clothes. And that's Maggie with the red curly hair. And Jessica's on the far end--she's the 'teacher's pet.'" 

"She's annoying as heck," Gary inserted. 

"Heck," Keith snorted, finding that word amusing. 

Joey proceeded despite the interruption, "...Nobody really likes her, but Amy does 'cause she brings oatmeal cookies to lunch and those're her favorite." 

Crono was impressed by how attuned Joey was to his class's sociometry. "What about her? On the other end?" He was curious to whether Joey had reserved any words for the meek-looking creature on the opposite side of the girls' table, a child whose long ebony mane was smoothed back by a plain hair band. 

"Oh, that's Rachel," he recalled, as if she were a mere skipped side note. "She's really shy. She only hangs around those other girls 'cause she wants to be popular like them." 

"Oh." 

"Anyway don't be fooled by how they look--they're all real mean. Well, except maybe Rachel. But especially Amy. She'd play a mean prank on you just as soon as ta look at you, just 'cause you're a boy. That's how nasty she is. She just looks real sweet and innocent in front of the grown-ups." 

Crono was duly impressed by that ruse. "They don't look so mean at all," he murmured disbelief. 

"Yeah, well, 'never judge a book by its cover,' is what my mom says." 

"And never judge a slut by her outfit," Liquel paraphrased, drawing a blank gawk from Crono. The others, acclimated to this sort of talk, were unfazed by his untoward remark. The redhead then decided to abandon his question about what a "slut" was, conscious that he might sound silly and naive. 

Instead, the boy sat and quietly studied what Joey had recently implied about "toe-stepping" and "ground rules," trying to build relationships with examples. Those girls were false to their appearances, according to Joey. This was a rather new concept to the seven-year-old. People looking one way and acting another? Nonsense. Why would anyone want to do that? Lying is wrong, as his mother tried to teach him. Of course, Crono would be a hypocrite to stand and say he'd never lied before, especially when trying to save face in front of adults and stay from trouble. Would this situation be similar? 

Crono was surprised he had never made the connection before. Just as he was sometimes dishonest, for whatever reason, so were other people. 

Now on the path to disillusionment regarding society's innocence, he adopted the phrase "never judge a book..." into his vocabulary and re-analyzed what he'd learned thus far today. Most of those mentioned girls Crono recognized from his own classroom, the members of which he considered helpful to know about first and foremost. A missing piece teased him, however. There was a girl Joey had neglected in his rather thorough lecture... 

...That's right! The quiet one with the glasses. 

The boy snapped back to Joey with a query. 

"Who's 'Booger'?" 

The table fell dead quiet. 

Crono was unnerved by the way the atmosphere instantly chilled around him. He couldn't have elicited a more stunned response if he had just announced he was really a fire-breathing heckran in human disguise. 

"...What?" 

Uneasy eyes darted across the crusty planks, meeting each other over the spill of food in an empathetic silence. Joey cleared his throat and extended himself towards Crono's ear. "Over there," he whispered. 

Joey's directed glance snaked through the lunch aisles and bounced over benches, and Crono lost himself in the search. "...I don't see it," he admitted. 

"No, way over there. By the tree." 

Crono looked such a way, and located the gentle birch on the far side of the grounds. The leafy thing's companion, ostracized from other children and all things edible, was a little girl. It was just the same kid he had taken notice of earlier--goofy glasses, big shirt, and all. She nursed a book in her lap and was oblivious to all else besides it. 

"Yeah, that's her," Crono identified the lass. "Who is she? Why's she off by herself?" 

"Shh!" Joey checked his volume. "Not so loud!" 

"Wha?" Crono was stumped by the order. "Why not? What's wrong? What'd I say?" 

"Booger's what's wrong," Gary shot with a rasp. "You can't talk about her--not around here." 

_That's crazy_, Crono thought. 

"Why not?" 

"She's a witch," Liquel asserted, albeit quietly. 

"No she's not," Keith countered disdainfully. 

"The hell she ain't! My brother says so!" 

"Guys, shut up!" Charlie chided them both. "You want him to hear us?!" 

"Who?" Crono was utterly lost. 

Keith wasn't hampered by a scolding. "Your brother's a dope!" 

Neither were Liquel's petulant rebuttals. "Oh, you talk about my brother?! Bring it on, man!" 

"Guys!" Joey projected over everyone, "He's coming!" 

"Shit!" Liquel ducked under the table, and Haru followed his example. 

Crono rattled the boards in front of him with a pair of fists. "Who's coming?!" he demanded, impatient with the frenzy. The clamor halted and tense looks flew towards the redhead. 

Why was everyone looking at him? 

Not _at him_, he realized as a shadow landed over his clenched hands. Behind him. 

"Hey, is this the new kid?" a booming, gruff voice questioned. If Crono hadn't any sense, he would have automatically determined that his hair had started talking, the sound was so close. The boy became a frozen dinner. 

The next voice was distinct, yet familiar. "Yeah, you can't miss that haircut from anywhere." 

Crono finally rallied the nerve to peer over his shoulder. Three dark obelisks loomed over him. Once his eyes regained their composure from turning to face the midday sun, he drew in their features. The owner of the last remark was the guy Crono had confronted en route to his desk before, Darren. Already that was a sign he wasn't within good company. 

The other two, whereas Darren was a tall youth, were giants in every other physical aspect. One was horribly obese, and his grungy white shirt failed to bridge the protruding expanse of skin between his navel and his shorts. He stood back and grinned moronically while swiping an arm under his dripping, pudgy nose. 

The last kid brought the word "titan" to mind immediately. While Haru was a toothpick in contrast to Charlie, Charlie was an eyelash compared to this newcomer. Big bones encased in hefty flesh collaborated to tower over the sitting boy. Lowering brows shadowed sharp, silver eyes. A rug of shredded carrot was sprawled over his head with uncombed abandon, and freckles had their way with his complexion. 

He crossed his arms and grinned menacingly--a presage to the forthcoming interrogation. "Well hi, new kid! How ya doin'?" His exaggerated enthusiasm trifled with Crono's already piqued suspicion. 

The boy wasn't aware of the knot in his throat until he had to choke it down in order to answer. "...Okay." 

"Really? Nothin' bad happen to ya yet?" 

Crono simply shook his head. He didn't dare prolong this conversation. 

"Hmm..." the large character rubbed his chin contemplatively. "You like it here, then?" 

Crono had to swallow again. Did someone feed him cotton? Oh yeah--he didn't eat yet. 

"...It's okay." 

"Really? Ya mean it?" The kid's belaboring of the question was nerve-racking; after drawing such nerves into fine strands, he plucked them by roughly patting Crono on the back, sparking a yelp from the boy. 

"Good!" In a more sadistic humor, he added, "...It's not as much fun for me if you already don't." 

Everyone cringed as the loud young man's boot crashed onto the countertop. "See here," he proclaimed to all ears present, "My name's Billy, and, uh, irregardless of what Gary over there says..." 

Gary gulped audibly. 

"...I'M the coolest man 'round here. And as 'the man,' everyone listens to my rules!" 

Joey boldly repudiated Billy's decree. "You can't make people listen to you--" 

"--Rule number one!!" the behemoth roared, trampling the tail of Joey's objection. "Ya don't talk to me..." He leaned towards Joey. "...unless I talk to you!" 

"Yeah Joey, where're your manners?" Darren sneered. 

"Rule number two!" He brandished two fingers to illustrate. "When I do talk to you, what I say, goes!" Billy stepped down from his makeshift soapbox and rounded the corner of the table, approaching the two bench spaces from which Haru and Liquel vanished. 

"Rule number three: you can run..." 

With a probing kick Billy bunted the two forms cowering beneath the table-boards. Both kids squirmed and squealed pathetically, while their agitator found such reactions greatly amusing. Laughing, he concluded, "...But you can't hide!! Hahahaha!" 

Billy began to plod off with his two sidekicks and a, "Farewell, chumps!" but paused as he neared Crono once more. The mammoth's tough hands settled on the redhead's shoulders, and Billy's voice slipped into a smooth, villainous hiss as he crept near the small boy's ear. "By the way..." 

The sure proximity of the bully's threatening snarl and piercing glare stabbed Crono's heart with ice. He wanted to just melt into the dirt and join Liquel and Haru down there. 

"...I, eh, saw you were looking at Booger over there. That's not smart, you know. 'Cause don't forget... _she's mine_. It'd be a real shame if you were suddenly the first blind kid here at Truce Omega." 

With a final pat on the back and a rumbling laugh, Billy stomped off, leaving his threat to sit on the table. 

None of the witnesses budged an inch, until a timid duo complained in a muffle, "...Can we come out, now?" 

Gary seemed to faint into his own arms, Keith gulped down a doughnut chunk that had been trapped in his throat since Billy arrived, and Charlie gave a weighty sigh. "Yeah, bro. Come on out." 

Haru and Liquel crawled back into view. Joey finally turned to Crono, who was beyond noticing his shaking hands. 

"That's why nobody talks about Booger."


	4. Chapter Four

4.

It was onerous work to wrench more information from table of intimidated students, and whatever was supplied came in petty scraps, at best. When Joey at last volunteered to clear away the smoke, the newcomer was enlightened to the elementary facts of life.

William Twain McGraph was learned to be in Crono's class, much to the new kid's dismay. This also implied a more foreboding possibility: that Crono and Billy would be sharing the same classes throughout their educational career. This wasn't taken with a light heart by the small boy. Already the gossip Crono had gathered about "Billy the Bully" was revolting. Popular propaganda maintained that Billy had recently slaughtered and eaten his neighbor's dog on the feeble grounds that it barked too much at night!

Billy's two sidekicks were Chucky and Darren. The latter Crono had already been acquainted with in a less-than-pleasant encounter, and there was nothing to learn about the former that couldn't speak for itself in appearance: Chucky was fat, ugly, and stupid, in no particular order. The only unknown concerning him was his relation to Billy; the most plausible connection Joey and his friends could concoct was that Billy let the ogre tag along because of his parents' supposed wealth, a valuable asset in any known situation to man.

What could be told with certainty, however, was that those three comprised the appropriately dubbed "terrible trio." Students and faculty alike were on guard against them, individually, and when the three were combined into one, roving squad, their very presence radiated something unique that sent others heading for the hills in fright.

Crono was fed some few, hushed words regarding the "forbidden girl," including Liquel's insistence that she was a witch. Even Joey, who was hardly the superstitious type, felt reluctant to disclose within public earshot what little he knew.

Booger was the ultimate outcast. She fit in nothing and with no one. She wasn't pretty or outgoing enough to be recognized by the girls, yet not ugly enough to be teased by the boys. Not even the well-informed Joey remembered exactly what her real name was; it had long been disregarded by the masses.

She didn't actively participate in class, sports, games, or anything remotely related to interaction with other people. Her best friends were books, ergo she was hardly seen without one. As much as she read, however, she never spoke. Judging by this, some secretly called her a genius, while others wildly speculated she was a complete retard who only stared at the print and pictures in those toted binders and never really absorbed a word of it. Whichever the student body's tendency, the general impression was that she was either crazy or in league with the dark arts.

As far as the girl and Billy were concerned, Booger apparently satisfied a set of prerequisites that permanently scratched her name onto the infamous "blacklist." The list was composed of the names of classmates whom Billy enjoyed torturing more so than the average victim. Whether or not there was an actual, tangible list stashed away somewhere was irrelevant; Billy knew all the names by heart. To join the odious club one had to be, among several related things, small, weak, and helpless. No one better embodied those qualities than Booger, therefore she was Billy's "favorite," destined to be picked on and harassed for as long as she may breathe.

Others that were "blacklisted" included Haru and Liquel, and learning thereof greatly explained their severe avoidance of the tyrannical kid. Conclusively, "Billy the Bully" was not a joke, but a real, formidable force to be reckoned with.

Before Crono's shrewd companion could share more, the briefing was compromised by a horrendously loud woman wielding a wooden spoon and bellowing, "Lunch is over! Git to class, ye hooligans!" After such spoon dealt smart welts to the back of some unwitting lunch-eaters' heads, the whole adolescent procession stampeded back to their classes like driven livestock.

Crono, ironically, had missed the opportunity to eat during the commotion, but instead was left to chew on Joey's promise to walk him to school the next day and explain away all of his bubbling questions.

In contrast with the swift, excited pace of the first half of the day, the second was afflicted with an incurable lethargy. Exacerbating this condition was the hot, stuffy room Crono's class was crammed into for the remainder of the day's lessons. The air conditioner was going to be fixed "soon," so he was informed.

The grammar instructor was under the alias of Miss Missy, a pun in herself who had decidedly tolerated enough sniggering by the time Crono had cracked up at first mention of her name. After receiving a testy rebuke he was herded into a seat and a lecture on the "parts of speech" began.

The tally of classmates had been altered in Miss Missy's room, with some familiar faces being replaced by others. Joey was gone, and so was Jessica. Amy had shown up in the roll count, and Gary seemed to be substituted for Keith. Darren had escaped the scene, but Crono was left with no hard feelings over that.

In a stroke of misfortune, however, Billy and Chucky were present. More ill tidings were in store for Booger, who couldn't escape being placed near them due to a fluke of desk arrangement and the accursed alphabetical seating the teacher emphasized.

The ticking second hand spun its laps around the wall clock, grudgingly tugging at the minute hand as if it were a lead ball chained to its ankle. When the hour reached three quarters after lunch, an unexpected break in events permitted a "nap time" to occur.

In this, chairs and tables were hastily pressed to the walls to accommodate a plethora of personalized floor mats, all heretofore locked away in cupboards at the rear of the room. Once those cushioned items were unfurled and smothered over the gum-sticky tiles, everyone leveled themselves with the ground and pretended to doze off for a half hour while Miss Missy stepped out for an alleged coffee break.

Upon her return, the room was restored to its original state, spare one crafty desk that always managed to misplace itself. In listening to the witty remarks and jokes directed at the mysterious seat, Crono caught an interesting analogy Haru invented that related the chair's frequency in returning to the same spot with a lightning bolt.

The final hour wrapped things up with "reading time," which was by all means self-explanatory. The only hinge on what might have been an uncomplicated affair was that each pupil was forced to take turns reading from the same text, out loud, before the audience that was their peers. In this fashion, a teacher's simple ploy to pass time had evolved into a test of everyone's ability to keep track, stay awake, and endure the agonizingly corrupted pronunciation of every word longer than four letters.

After Keith had successfully prolonged a thirty-second paragraph to five minutes with his sluggish phonetic skills, Booger's turn was predictably passed over. Miss Missy lacked a certain foolishness, patience, or both, that had faulted Miss Holt that morning when trying to coax the girl into talking.

The children's hardback story, "The Frog and the Sword," was fumbled off to the next eligible speaker in the row. Rachel smoothed the pages against her desk and prepared a breath that would raise her voice to an audible level, but just as the first syllable was poking out of her mouth the teacher plucked away her initiative.

"--Wait Miss Erguay," she was at least formal in her interruption. There was a scarce scent of malice in Miss Missy's following suggestion. "Why don't we let our new student read next instead?"

Crono was bunted upside the head with this, and he popped out of his hazy daydreaming to register what had just played against his favor.

No way! It wasn't remotely near his turn, his thoughts blindly stammered. 'T' couldn't be farther from 'E' on the last name chart if it was on the moon. Seeking confirmation of what he had just heard, Crono's bewildered look grazed the sly curl at the corner of his instructor's pasty lips. The boy grimaced as a sinister proposition dawned on him, and regret stung him for laughing at the lady's name earlier.

Was this Miss Missy's way of getting back at him?

Rachel wasn't beyond perplexity, herself, but she reluctantly complied, rose from her seat, and relinquished the reading material to the newcomer. Crono uneasily watched her retreat to her own allotted space, then attempted to deflect his concern from the sudden onslaught of waiting eyes by skimming over the passage left open to him. Where was he supposed to start?

Cursing himself for his lapse of concentration moments ago, he resorted to stalling to beg more time. "Um..."

"What's the matter?" Miss Missy urged him in a painfully baiting tone, "Please stand up, so we can all hear you."

_Yes_, Crono nurtured his germinating presumption; Miss Missy was out to get him.

The redhead's shock was rapidly dissolving into agitation. Bearing the swelling tide of snickers with a clenched jaw, he balanced his knees on the palm of his chair to imitate standing and hinted a glare at his insidious teacher.

She was a shriveled prune of a woman who couldn't hold a candle to Miss Holt's generously youthful aura. Distinctive features that had withered with age were painted onto her long, hollow face like understudies to actors tired of putting up a pretense of beauty. Miss Missy was as tall and thin as a summer reed, and just as liable to tip over in a strong enough breeze. This probably explained why she kept her classroom's windows sealed shut, daring the sun to steal its way inside and stir the already heated air to sweltering levels.

Posted at the head of the oven cooking the thirteen children with her arms obstinately crossed and a slender chalk holder squirming between her knotted fingers, Miss Missy ushered the brooding student along. Miraculously, not a bead of sweat tainted her pose.

"...Well?"

Now, in consideration of Crono's vantage, one must realize that podunk fishing villages like his own were no less remote from the heart of society and culture than the standard lunar colony. Public education in such deprived resorts was courtesy of the resident crazy old lady, who spouted antique literature and senile ramblings beneath her husband's rust-perforated tool shed in a toothless voice that wheezed like eighth-century poetry quoted through a straw.

Granted this, no one from Marriville was very literate.

Shoving aside the notion of opposing authority and instigating trouble for himself, Crono resigned to the deed with a sigh, and plunged into the treacherous recital with his best guess on which line to begin reading.

"And the... braf--brave..."

Almost instantly his effort was impeded by a questionable word. He blinked at it, thrown off track by the spelling: KNIGHT. What was that "K" doing there? It looked too funny to be right. Maybe there was an error? Why would someone misspell a word that way?

Intuition told him he was going to sound like an idiot, but he strained to pronounce it anyway.

"Kiiiinn..."

Never had the prattle of a school bell sounded so harmonious as it did when choosing to dismiss class at that precise moment. The crowd of suffocating kids unanimously started for the door without provocation, and within five seconds the room was practically cleared. Crono's own slip into the departing swarm was undermined by Miss Missy's hail, plucking him from the mob by name.

'_No...!_' his body language mutely screamed as he pivoted on one heel to meet the teacher.

As she spoke, Miss Missy engaged herself in packing a sagging cloth purse embroidered with pale daisies. "Before you go home the secretary needs to see you in her office in back," she stated simply.

Crono nodded lamely. That was all?

When a short silence followed, the old hag threw a smirk at the young man still lingering in her presence, as if he hadn't understood a word of her instruction.

"Well?" she impatiently prompted over her shoulder. "Be off wi' you."

Nothing was unclear about that, apparently. Crono darted away.

Slivers of afternoon sun sifted through the creamy white tabs blinding the window in the facility's back office, and impressed a golden bar code onto the secretary's desk.

Crono, tending to his own observations from the padded bench opposite the oak table, remotely inspected the clutter colonizing the desk's surface: bundles of disarrayed leaflets and documents, a glazed porcelain pencil holder in the mold of a kitten wearing a cooking apron, a wristwatch with the tail of its silver chain draped precariously over the front ledge, a scissor-like device for punching holes into the aforementioned papers, and an obsidian black typewriter pinning a pair of manila folders to the tanned wood with its girth. Neatly standing in a niche in the foreground was a modest label: Ms. Janice Debbins.

'_She has two last names?_' Crono mused. '_Cool. I wonder how that happens?_'

Discarding that poser, the boy jumped thought trains to wonder why he had been summoned this way. Was he in trouble already? It didn't seem so. Thus far, he had only been asked a series of questions over things that he--and more importantly, the secretary--should have already known: his name, age, where he lived, and such.

Miss Debbins was nested behind the personalized bulk of furniture, sketching down memos that were masked from Crono's spying gaze by a prohibiting point of view.

"So, how long you been in Truce?" she entertained a light conversation. Her voice was soft, yet worn by the length of the hot, dull day.

Crono was the master of succinct answers. "A week."

"A week, huh?" she returned amidst her work, not fighting terribly hard to sound interested, "Where'd you move from?"

"Marriville."

"Never heard of there before," she wasn't the first to admit. "Is that west of here, near the castle? Or on the southern continent?"

He shook his head, increasingly amazed by how obscure his old haven really was. "It's across the ocean."

The boy was treated with a short, peculiar stare, and then Miss Debbins quietly resumed her duties.

Crono was muddled by her reaction. What was so strange about living on the other side of the sea? It wasn't a bad place, he figured. Perhaps she misheard him?

As he thumbed through the archive of the unsolved, Crono arrived at a bookmark in his memory, and immediately blurted out as politely as he could, "Hey ma'm?"

"Hmm?" was the only indication that her attention was aroused.

"What's 'my sci key?'"

"Excuse me?" the secretary chuckled, not believing that she had heard anything besides the opening sentence of a childish yarn. She spared her exhausted pen for a moment to dedicate her eyes and ears to the boy.

"A 'my sci key.' What is it?" Crono reiterated, not daunted by her condescension.

Unaware he was completely serious, she replied, "Well I don't know," behind a smile that considered the boy amusing. "What is it?"

Crono, his mind narrowed to only relevant responses, didn't register the traditional capitulation to a joke, and his enquiry was derailed.

"Huh? I was asking you, m'am."

She blinked, finally reconciled to the fact that he wasn't trying to tell a joke. "Oh." To compensate for her slip, her courtesy accommodated the earnest question. "Well, it sounds like another language. Where'd you hear it?"

There must be some developmental glitch in the inhibition of a seven-year-old that permits one to simply spout the first words at the tip of his tongue, just because it's the truth.

"From a lady in my dream."

"A lady in your dream?" Miss Debbins echoed, humoring him as she found her pen and continued as she was before. "Well isn't that something? Hmm..." She pretended to mull over the boy's question with a thoughtful hum. "...I suppose you should ask someone else. Maybe they'd know what it means."

At this, Crono sank into the bench and pouted for a time, miffed by his unfruitful searching. He was positive that adults knew everything from the way they boasted their superiority to children, but that was the second grown-up he had asked regarding that strange phrase. Didn't anyone know what it meant? Did it mean anything at all?

The woman yanked him out of his reverie with a tired sigh. "Anyway, I think I've got everything straightened out. You can go on home now."

"Okay," he mumbled and bounced from the lofty, adult-sized seat to the scuffed tile floor. A chortle floated past him as he strolled out the open door.

"'My sci key'... heh. Kids."

* * *

As Crono pressed through the building's back exit and greeted the outside, a bombarding wave of heat instantly challenged him to retrace his steps into the school. He shrugged off the simmering sensation and cleared the doorstep, emerging onto the rear lot.

The campus layout was modestly straightforward, and Crono had memorized the general landmarks and routes with only a cursory walk-through. If he had many faults, an inability to learn quickly wasn't one of them.

Being established on the street corner of two neighborhoods, queerly titled Turkey and Brought, the grounds were easily accessible to the natives. While its face was open to Brought Road, a wooden privacy fence shielded its northern border to Turkey Lane. Spacing a narrow walking margin between that barrier and the building's broadside was a cobblestone pathway seized by weeds. The unkempt hedges that guarded each side of the ruptured trail competed desperately over the nutrient-poor soil, and their parched dabs of green foliage futilely begged for sustenance.

The schoolhouse itself was rendered in an "L" shape, with the longer piece parallel to the fence and sporting doors at its extremities. The escape nearest the offices opened onto the lunch courtyard.

Crono's gaze flew over the alignment of picnic tables, all serenely dormant in the absence of rioting youngsters. The watching birch wafted its branches alluringly, entreating passers-by to take shelter from the strafing sun under its spaded leaves.

The sight of the vacant lunch yard couldn't better remind him that he was still hungry, and a sore emptiness nipped the boy's stomach.

"Okay, we're goin' home," he sighed in reply to his belly's audible objections.

The boy was rounding the corner on his left and heading away down the slim, bushy aisle when...

"Here doggie! Com'on, fetch!"

Some voices.

"Com'on, it's right here! Beg for it!"

And laughter.

An eerie recognition halted him. Those were familiar voices. Voting to investigate, Crono switched course and sidestepped to the right. Peering around the bend exposed the angular hollow that chipped into the building to permit its "L" appearance. It was a barren space about two rooms deep and partially secluded from the afternoon sun by the two walls hugging its sides. The overcast region sheltered little else than a boxy air conditioning unit and some tin trash canisters.

Four kids were collected there for some type of meeting. One of Crono's two immediate observations was that, contrary to what he had heard, there was no dog to see. The other was that he could pin names on everyone faster than the consequence of their presence could register with him.

It was "Billy the Bully" and his two buddies in crime, Chucky and Darren. Judging by their activity involving the fourth member of the party, Booger, nothing of good intent was taking place.

Ducked behind the wall, and thus from their view, Crono kept a spying eye on what proceeded.

The three infamous students had caged the little girl between them, and with taunting whoops and shouts they tossed a dark shape betwixt them, while Booger scurried in frantic circles to snatch the object in flight. At a serious height disadvantage, she met only with fleeting success before one of the taller lads would steal the chance of retrieval away.

Obviously, Crono figured, the item in attention belonged to her, but he couldn't form a definite image out of the blur that shot from one boy's hand to the next.

"Com'on Boogs, you can do better than that!" Billy mockingly encouraged the frustrated girl. Darren passed their current toy into the carrot-top's grasp, and he dangled the shiny object from the tip of his finger like bait on a fishing hook. "Ya want it?" he jeered.

It was a pair of glasses. Following his conclusion, Crono noticed Booger lacking such. From her lowly position she stared up at the bully, her eyes wide and pleading, but her voice missing.

"Okay then, doggie, beg for it." Billy wiggled the item over her head, and the clear lenses glimmered in the afternoon light.

Chucky applied a rough shove when she hesitated. "Com'on, beg!" he goaded, his heavy, slurred voice a rumbling demand.

Booger stumbled to Billy's toes, wavered to reclaim her balance, and then tentatively reached up one hand. Squeaky grunts spoke for her straining effort as Billy tugged the spectacles another notch beyond her. "Aw, what's the matter? Can't reach?" he teased.

The threesome laughed heartily at this, and Billy furthered the charade by hurling the girl's glasses in a tall arc back to Darren. Deftly snagging them from the free air, the slender boy lured Booger into a short-lived chase before relaying the stolen bit behind his back and over to Chucky. In this fashion, the "keep away" game continued.

Crono frowned. '_That's mean_,' he determined. But, what could be done? He juggled various options.

He should go help her. Yes, that would be the right, chivalrous thing to do. Just like Cyrus and the Knights of the Square Table. But wouldn't it be dangerous? Wasn't he outnumbered three to one? He could take them on, he ludicrously convinced himself.

Several red flags whisked before his reckless decision, as well as the onslaught of warnings Joey and his friends had taken sure measure to drill into his skull. Topping these off were Billy's own threatening words, haunting him in ghastly tones.

_"...don't forget... she's mine."_

She's his... Crono shrank against the flaking layers of paint and cobweb filming the wall. Was this something he really wanted to interfere with? Did he want to be "blacklisted"?

Then Matt's chiding message rang through his ears like the hammer of a gong.

_"...How you ever gonna grow to be a warrior like that Cyrus guy you keep talkin' about if yer a wussy cry-baby??"_

Cyrus... that's right! The brave knight Cyrus would never back down in a situation like this. Crono lowered his brow and adopted a mask of determination. He had made up his mind.

In the meantime, Booger had reached the end of her wits, and she plopped to the ground in a sobbing fit, refusing to participate in any more ridicule on her behalf. The trio of boys slowed a stop, confounded by this event.

"Aw man, she quit!" Chucky whined, disheartened.

"No she don't!" Billy declared, and attempted to provoke the crying girl into action once more by throwing a swift kick at her side. "Git up!"

She squealed piteously at the blow and reflexively shriveled into a ball, her legs and arms tucked beneath her.

Noting this result, Darren expressed a smirk toward the aggressive one. "Nice going, Billy," he berated him. "I hope you don't plan to play hot potato with Booger as the ball."

"Shut up!" Billy snapped, not concealing his agitation.

"Hey you--!"

Everyone froze. Booger shed one hand from her covered face and chanced a peek at whom or what that could be so audacious as to intrude on the lot. Her grounded features mimicked shock as the school's recent addition boldly strode into view. Crono advanced several steps toward those huddled before stopping, swiping a lock of crimson out of his vision, and crossing his arms defiantly.

The band of ruffians spun to face him, their demeanors fluctuating from boy to boy. Chucky crudely snorted a tendril of slimy mucus back into his left nostril and squinted his eyes in a leer. "Hey, it's that new kid."

"Wha'ddya want? We're busy," Billy curtly informed him, his mood shuffling between indifference and annoyance.

"You stop that right now and leave her alone," Crono barked assertively.

A chilling quiet descended on the five. Billy's caterpillar brows inched upward as he exchanged looks with his fellows.

The three simultaneously exploded into laughter. Crono's spirit sank.

"W-w-what?" Darren cackled. He rolled his wrist at the cocky boy, inviting him to repeat himself. "Say that again, really! I don't think I heard right!"

As Chucky scrubbed at his misting eyes his cheeks flushed rubicund in their fight to refrain from grinning like a maniac. "Me neither! That's good... that's really funny!"

Even Billy succumbed to a few short, exclamatory bursts. "Ha! Haha! Heheheh! Good one!"

The good humor was abruptly dropped like a brick and his face transformed to stone. "Now seriously, wha'd you want?"

Crono pounced on the opportunity to regroup his courage. He inflated himself with a long breath and held his balled fists to his sides, mustering the guise of an imposing adversary.

"I said," he strongly repeated, "Leave her alone."

Crono didn't anticipate the delayed, incredulous reaction. Billy gawked at him, near astonishment. "Yer serious, aren't you?"

"No wonder he wound up at Omega," Darren snidely remarked to his cohorts, "He's a dumbass."

"Huh." Billy planted his hands on his hips and assumed a contemplative posture. "Well, what should we do, guys?" he opened debate. "The new kid wants us to leave Booger alone."

"Aw, I dunno, Billy..." Darren drawled, feigning indecisiveness. "I say we... um..." A derisive grin spread over his jaw. "...kill 'im."

"Pound him," Chucky concurred, complementing the suggestion by slamming four bared knuckles into the meat of his other hand.

"Okay. Sounds good." Billy ruled, as if it were a trivial affair, and the trio encroached on the intruder in unison.

As if the gravity of his predicament only suddenly caught up with him, Crono gulped down a terrified bile that turned his stomach in on itself and simulated the feel of swallowing a heavy stone. He started to tremble like a shrub in a gale as the three massive redwoods scaled overhead and blotted out the sun.

Amazingly, the boy hadn't yet fled, despite his racing heart. He unsteadily eased into what resembled a fighting stance, and his fists leveled with his shoulders, just as Matt used to train him during those idle summer days when self-defense lessons were considered a good, time-consuming precaution.

"I-I ain't a'scared a' you."

The "terrible trio" all sneered. Billy lifted his bouldery arm.

"You should be."

Day turned to night for Crono.


	5. Chapter Five

A/N: Muchas gracias to those who reviewed

To the ever-inquisitive Silver: I'm glad you're interested in what happens, but it wouldn't be fair to answer all of your questions, just yet. Wait a few more chapters, and I'll be sure to address them--Actually, I might need some input to...  
Ah. Not time to worry about that yet. Mwehehe.  
And thanks for the offer; my sister usually helps me out there, but if she starts to slack up I'll be sure to bother you.

Xyn: If I've been "adopted," should I be scared...?

Small chapter, here, to close out Crono's first day.

5.

Booger wished the air conditioner worked.

She could have related to the outdoor unit's shuddering fan as she cowered behind the box's concealing dimensions. She had foreseen from the moment of the boy's arrival that his efforts to dissuade the three bullies from their game would ultimately--and painfully--end in vain. However, as far as diverting ample time for the girl to hide was concerned, he was successful.

The sound-numbing roar generated by the metal box would have also muffled the fragments of a conversation the little girl would rather not have had close by.

"Dang. Down in one hit."

"Yeah, that wasn't very much fun."

"Loser."

"Well, that's that. How much longer am I gonna hafta keep teaching these bolt-heads who's boss 'round here?"

"Stupid new kids. Think they know everything, y'know?"

"...Hey, where'd she go?"

Booger clung to a gasp, praying no hint of movement would discriminate her whereabouts.

"Man, she musta hauled it."

Darren's jesting voice hollered after a spectre, "Hey Boogs, ya didn't leave a note! That's rude, ya know!"

"'guess she's not such a 'tard, after all!"

Some laughs.

"Aw, screws to her. There's always tomorrow. Let's get outta here."

The girl freed a puff of breath proportionate to her relief.

"...Hey guys, what about this?" Chucky hindered the group's departure. Booger snatched back that released air, her anxiety stirred again.

"Wha? That? Just leave it."

A black wisp sailed into Booger's limited scope of view, bounced off the whitewashed wall with a dim clap, and fell into a pile on the sand below. She blinked at what shaped out to be her discarded glasses. A second later three more blurs disappeared around the building's edge, any visible danger leaving with them.

Another protracted minute assured Booger that the afternoon's threat had seen fit to vacate the campus. In an almost jubilant response she breathed wholly for the first time in many tense minutes, savoring the scent of mildew festering in the sour wood in front of her. Her impish mitts rubbed at her eyes and combed through her purple, scruffy hair in an attempt to palliate her distress.

When notably calmed, the girl crawled from her dusty sanctuary and staggered into the graces of the relentless sun. She scooped up her spectacles from their resting place and thanked whichever fate returned them to her in fine condition. With regained clarity she panned her vision around the still courtyard, and then skipped her gaze to a lifeless, clothed pile, baking in the intense light.

She started over to it, wary of its state of consciousness, yet drawn by a curious motive. Kneeling beside the lump, Booger instantly surmised what had befallen the child.

The knockout was swift, hard, and delivered with a punch to the cranium. A red soup leaked from the mark of impact and streaked down the length of one eyebrow. He had been soundly sedated by the trauma, and the boy's face sank into a sober depiction of deep slumber.

The girl's own expression was plagued with fretful, scattered worries. A period of thought finally inspired her to relocate the young man, in any manner feasible, to the soothing grasses carpeting the base of the nearby tree. While this was easier said than done for most, for Booger it was an even contest. She hooked his arms in hers and tugged the boy in laborious huffs towards the rejuvenating shade. After the boy's trailing boots had drawn two neat, long furrows across the sandy lot, Booger settled the limp body on the mat of celadon growth.

Bearing a light pride at having reached her destination, and at wits with what to do now, she clumsily dropped onto her rear and collected herself before reassessing the situation. Once dragged into matters, rather literally, she informally assumed custody over this hapless, foolish boy.

As Booger meditated on the next, logical course of action, she coyly scrutinized the unaware youngster. He seemed... odd. Different. Casting aside the freakish hair, he still withheld an indefinable characteristic that almost demanded attention. There was something strange to his looks, or his attitude, or perhaps his origin. Even his name was rather unorthodox.

...Crono... Booger couldn't dispel the weird hunch that had been luring her towards him from the moment she first laid eyes on him.

Recovering from her lost gazing, she blushed to spite herself. The girl decided to cease such thoughtful wandering and tend to the lad's minor wound. At a lack for what else to use as a bandage, she gingerly unbound the strip of white material serving as his headband and padded at the gash on his forehead, mopping up any stray blood.

As she sat back to admire her work, a clue of the boy's revival alarmed her. He weakly shifted his head to one side and began to moan. Was he waking up?

The notion of the boy rising to discover her gripped Booger with a new panic.

* * *

_Crono..._

The subtle jingle of rustling leaves.

_Crono..._

A trickle of wind.

_Crono..._

A brilliant spectrum of hues, dancing with the smooth feet of rolling water. Green, red, shady blue, shimmering gold...

_Crono... It's okay. Everything is fine._

The colors sharpened, acquiring depth and image. The visage of a woman coalesced from the meshed shades like a portrait from a palette.

Crono was awestruck by her beauty. Fine threads of hair washed over her delicate shoulders and framed her round, pale face with rivulets of silken lavender. Her eyes, those of luminous sapphire, embodied the infinite reaches of the sea. What intrigued the boy's fancy, however, was the pair of feathery plates drifting at silent attention behind her.

They were wings--great, crimson ones, their soft texture ticked with flakes of gold. They coiled into a flaring halo about her head and exposed the intricate remiges layered on the underside, like sequin on a ballroom gown.

'_...An angel...!_' Crono alerted himself to his assumption.

She hovered over him, which hinted to the boy that he was flat to the ground. ...Where was the ground? Where was he? Who was this lady?

The woman's entire mien smiled glowingly. When her lips parted, her voice cast itself as an echo deprived of identity or origin.

_Fear not. The servant is here. Our mistress will be whole, soon._

These cryptic statements fell short of doing anything besides obfuscating the poor boy.

'_Mistress?_' he inwardly wondered.

The woman's intently adoring gaze seemed to mutely express her well meaning. An angelic hand fondly brushed Crono's chin.

_We will meet again, my hero. Sooner than you think._

Among Crono's lingering thoughts before the apparition vanished in a sleepy haze was how soft the lady's hand felt on his skin. It was like being touched by a rose petal. Her calling voice, not unlike a flower, was whimsically gentle.

_Watch for the Mii Sci Kee..._

The static of swaying flora. The shrill chirp of a blue jay. The faint crunching of... footsteps on grass... fading quickly...

Crono rolled over drunkenly, his sensations dulled to the army of tickling, green bristles furring the earth. A perk of warm afternoon breeze swept his mind's landscape free of drowsy fog and reintroduced him to reality. His eyes peeled open and connected with the first attracting item within his grounded field of sight.

Vision focused on that black ant, the boy correlated his swimming thoughts.

He was... outside? Lying on grass? Maybe Matt would know why...

Current events slapped him in the face. Matt was long gone, away in Marriville. Crono, meanwhile, was in Truce, in his new school's back courtyard. He had just picked a fight with Billy "the bully" McGraph. And lost. Badly.

He climbed to sit up, and was instantly overwhelmed by a swell of throbbing pain. Crono pasted a hand to his skull and tried to massage his fresh headache away.

"Ah... that hurts..." he groaned. The boy compared this unpleasant experience to being hit with a blunt object. It was recalled a moment later, somewhat to irony's amusement, that he was precise in that relation: the object was Billy's fist.

Another, less blatant ache suddenly afflicted his conscience. Sulking in the wake of his confrontation with the bully, Crono was belatedly beginning to rue ever crossing his path. He should have heeded the warnings of Joey and the other boys. While thoughts began to piece together the events that inspired his recklessness, a pang of dislocation aroused his inquisitiveness.

Surveying his environment, the boy found it strange to have turned up where he did. Didn't he collapse several feet away, in the sand? How did he recover so far from there, near the birch tree? Yet another averting puzzle piece was picked up, and the youngster grimaced with confusion.

"...Booger...?"

Where'd she go?

Crono jerked back his hand after encountering a sticky dew just above his eyebrow. Dumbly staring at the bright red that filled the creases in his fingerprints, it occurred to him that he was losing small measures of blood from an open cut on his face. He considered the potential hazard from this, and then eventually deemed that he was okay, just as that winged lady had told him.

Any remnants of dazed reasoning were stamped down as Crono fully awoke to that musing. That lady! He had seen her again. She had spoken to him another time. Was he asleep throughout the whole episode? Was the "angel lady" merely a figure of the subconscious realm, however bizarre and imaginative as it was? If so, why did she say such things?

Who was the "mistress?" What was, or is, the "Mii Sci Kee"? Crono sorely wished he could understand the significance of those three puny words.

Returning to more immediate matters, he carefully reached up again and poked at his bruised skin, provoking a hissing wince. With a bit more prudence he fingered the surrounding fleshy patches, scanning for any further damage. To his relief, he discovered nothing of injuries to concern him. However, when combing through the fiery growth on his scalp, a quirk disconcerted him. A particular piece of headgear was missing.

Wasn't he wearing a white headband?

* * *

_Dir journal,_

Boi wat a wird day i had! Evrewun at skul iz rile wird. I got tu tichurs. Miz Hult tichis maf and shis nic. Miz Misi tichis gramur and shis ril meen. Shi almos meid me reed alowd tuday.

I met ulot of uther pepul at skul to lik Joie whoz nic to me. Hez goin to shoud me arond tomuro. Thin i met a giy namd Bile and he wuznt nic at al. Hez a rel girk. Joie seid that he liks to pik on pepul mor litl thun him lik bugir. bugir iz a rely rely wird gurl that i met and shi nevr talkz. I dunt evin no if thas hir ril nam. I cant emagin wat it wuld bi lik to nevr talk.

niway i trid to help hir but Bily and hiz frindz beet me up and thin i fink he tuk my bandanuh bicuz i cant find it no mor. Im reli mad that Bily stold tat frum me it wuz my favirit bicuz moma saiz it uzed to bi my dads. I dunt no my dad but i no tat bilongd to him and im goin to git it bak from Bily tomuro.

oh yeh i almos furgot whin i wuz uslep i sah thu anjul agin. Shi sed somfin ubowt thu my si ki agin and ubowt a miztris beein hol. I stil dunt no wat shi menz. I hop i se hir agin and den mabi shi wil eksplan wat that menz.

Im goin to slep now.

-Crono (not Cruno lik Miz Hult daut)


	6. Chapter Six

A/N: So, eh... if anyone has questions about this story, be sure to check my bio. I've made sure to address anything I feel like disclosing there.

Xyn: Well, as long as you're harmless, I won't get in your way, hehe. Thanks a lot for your support--it's quite motivating. Ditto to Silver.  
Kayn: I agree with your point, and even admitted to it in my bio, heh. I'm not as smart as I may sound--just obsessive compulsive (seriously). I'll nit-pick over my diction for hours. It's probably not healthy. Hmm... maybe if I seek counseling my writing'll finally smooth out...? (Hahahaha.)

Geez, I can't write a single author's note without rambling...

6.

Dawn heralded the arrival of another day at the seaside town of Truce. Assimilated into the city's hustling morning commute was a pair of little wanderers, ambling to school in no certain rush. With a wall of wood to their left and a stream of paved road to their right, the two children were confined to what limited sidewalk pedestrians were afforded.

Joey maintained a mild, reticent demeanor as he watched a small cart awkwardly bounce over Turkey Lane's rugged cobblestones on two wide-spoked wheels. It was difficult to classify the creature hauling the rolling crate of timber as a "dragon," with its broad shoulders, arched back, four stumpy legs, blunt-toed feet, sagging neck, and dim, coal eyes sunk into the blank countenance of a camel. It was hardly at comparison with the legendary monsters of its namesake.

The youngster drew his attention away from the distancing vehicle and the noisy clatter its passing aroused, training it again on the conversation with his traveling companion, Crono.

"You should just let it go, man," he inserted his opinion of the boy's tale of defeat and theft.

"No way," Crono refuted any such notion, "That was my bandanna, and it used to be my dad's. Billy ain't gonna walk away with it. He didn't haf to take it like that."

"And you didn't have to go and pick a fight with 'im. That was stupid," Joey countered. "You're lucky you're not dead now. What were you thinkin', anyway?"

The question quashed the rest of the boy's queued arguments. Crono's gaze slid to his feet, where he counted the slight indents defining one concrete slab from the next. A slice of untamed hair dangled loosely in front of his nose, flouting the cloth restraint the boy now sorely missed.

"...I'm still gonna git it back," he pouted in a grumble. Switching topics, his focus darted to the left to catch the image of his friend. The sun at Joey's back cast him in relief against the scrolling wood planks beyond him.

"There's still some things I don't get," Crono began. "What those guys were sayin' yesterday, right before I, uh, got beat up. Darren, I think, said somethin' about, 'no wonder I wound up at Omega.' What's he talkin' about?"

"Omega?" Joey tacked a perplexed note to the word. The relevance of the name tagged his memory a second afterward. "Yeah, that's the name of our school: Truce Omega Primary."

Crono reflexively smirked in annoyance. "Yeah, I know that already. What's the 'Omega' part mean? What's that got to do with me bein'... I mean, uh, what's that got to do with anything?" he verbally evaded admitting to be what Darren labeled him earlier: a dumbass.

"Well you see, there's three different kinds of schools 'round here in Truce," the dark-haired one launched into his "explanation mode." "There's Truce Alpha, which'is a private school where all the rich kids go, then there's Truce Beta, which'is where most a'the smart kids go, and then there's where we go, Truce Omega."

"Where the dumb, poor kids go," Crono deduced, suddenly understanding the background behind Darren's obscure snub.

"Now you're getting it."

"But I ain't dumb and my ma' ain't poor!" the redhead asserted, reasonably offended.

"Hey neither am I!" Joey retaliated just as hotly. "It's not just the dumb kids and the poor kids that end up at our school, you know. There's other stuff, too."

The allusion to "other stuff" quelled Crono's rising temper, and he reflected an open curiosity. "Wha'd'ya mean? What other stuff?"

Joey flinched, stung by the insinuations he was asked to expound upon. "Listen..." His voice leveled to a confiding gravity. "The world's not fair, Crono. Lots of people are gonna try ta' put ya down, just because you're not the same as everybody else. You can just ask Liquel. He says that he can't get into the good schools wid all the smart kids because he's yellow. All his brothers say so too, and I met 'em and I know it's prolly true. It's because his skin's a funny color that they don't let his dad work for the same pay as his assistant, who gets more.

"Then there's people like me who don't got no dad to provide for my mom and me and we hafta live on pensions that we get from the kingdom. And I can't go to Alpha or Beta 'cause they say that since they're payin' just enough for us to get by they don't need to waste any more money on us so I can get good schoolin'. And that's the way my mom says it is and that's the reason a lot of us are stuck where we are."

Crono was treated with a stare to drive the point through. "Do ya get it?"

The boy bowed his head, sullen with his prospects. "...I don't have a dad neider... Is that why I go to Omega wich'you? 'cause I ain't got a dad that goes ta work?"

Joey considered his case. "...Maybe. Probably more 'cause you're from the East, though."

Crono wasn't sure which issue he wanted to tackle first: why his origins were relevant, or how Joey knew them, given all that Crono had (or rather, hadn't) related to him about his old home.

"Huh? Wha'ddya mean? What's that got to do wid it? And how did ya know that? You said you ain't never heard of Marriville."

Joey's response teetered on a laugh. "Your accent, dummy."

Crono was learning new words all the time. "Accent? What's that?"

"It's the way you talk. You talk real slow and keep saying 'ain't.' My mom says that's the way stupid mystic lovers from the East talk."

Incidentally, Crono was unfamiliar with the mystic breed, and if not for the word "stupid," he wouldn't have registered the insult, much less combated it with such vigor.

"I don't love mystics! I ain't even met one before."

Joey grinned satirically. "Yeah, and 'ain't' ain't a word."

Was Joey mocking him, now? Crono had the nerve to slug him, but refrained from hitting someone he'd barely met. Matt would have taken the beating with a jovial shrug and told the boy to lighten up.

Joey carried his fit of light humor back into the conversation, giving his words an uncharacteristic optimism.

"Well anyway, don't worry. Maybe if you do good enough, they'll let you move to the fancy schools and stuff. You'd hafta be really smart and good in class, though. That's what the teachers say. Every now and then they let someone 'move up.'"

Before Crono could request some encouraging testimony of this occurrence, Joey finished his thought. "...haven't seen it happen yet, though."

Burdened with the label of reject, Crono enveloped his fists in his tunic pockets and dejectedly bunted a stray pebble with the toe of his boot. "Well that's stupid," he ranted, "Dat ain't fair, to be kept outta the smart schools just 'cause yer skin's a different color, or 'cause you ain't got a dad or enuf money or came from someplace else. So what? That don't make no sense."

"Like I said, life's not fair," Joey recapitulated the discussion, finding his serious mood again. "I don't know what they've been teachin' you at wherever that place is you say you're from, but over here there's only two types of people: people like Billy, who push ev'rybody around to get what they want, and people like Booger, who can't do anything but sit around and take it. She prob'lly isn't stupid as much as people say, she just don't have any other options. And if you were her you'd figure that out too, real quick.

"But nobody can feel sorry for 'er either, 'cause that's the best way to get Billy on your butt fast. The world's a lot like that. You can't afford to feel sorry for nobody. In the end it sucks for everyone, but I didn't make the world, I'm just stuck on it. And so're you, Crono, so you'd better get used to how things run around here. It's better off for ya."

As if resigned to this philosophy, Joey let his argument rest. He stepped into a fog of silence and absently monitored the closing length between himself and the iron lamppost on the street corner, the site at which the fence would end and their trek to school would conclude.

After a pensive quiet, he heard Crono's voice, soft with an internal struggle. "But... no."

Joey quizzically regarded him. "What?"

The fire-haired youngster inclined to face him, his expression hardening with newfound resolve. "No," he elevated his tone. "I'm not gonna be like Billy, and I ain't gonna be like Booger, eider! The only reason people like Billy keep showin' their ugly faces is bu'cus there's too many people like Booger out dere, that won't stand up and do somethin' about it! But I ain't gonna be like that 'cause I don't think it's fair and it shouldn't have to go on just 'cause everyone's a'scared of 'im! I ain't scared, and that guy's gonna git what's comin' to him when I git back my bandanna!" Crono declared, flashing a set of balled fists to complement his enthusiasm.

Joey rolled up his brow, taken aback by the impetuous display of heroism. "...Man, you're dense. Were you listening to me at all yesterday, or did Billy knock some sense outta you back there?"

Crono frowned at him and dropped his hands. "Don't make fun. I wus serious."

The other shook his head, dismissing the crazy ideas. "Whatever. Just don't come running to me when you get hurt."

Crono was irked by the lack of support, not understanding Joey's acquiescence to the bully's ruthless methods.

An excess weight pricked his palm. Distracted, the boy unfurled his paw to examine it.

The stoic one peered at the upheld item, both fascinated and repelled by it. "There's somethin' growin' on that rock! It's all green," Joey reported, his face pinched with disgust.

"Musta been in my pocket," Crono realized.

"What is it?"

The redhead beamed at the shard of stone. "It's lucky!"

"Uh... yeah." Joey was skeptical. "Don't you mean 'ugly'?"

Crono smirked. "No way. Matt ga'me it. It's way lucky, belie' me."

"Who?" the lad was compelled to ask, had both kids not reached their destination at last. The fibrous barrier they had been trailing finally exhausted itself, intercepted at the last driven stake by Brought Road. Rounding the wall allowed them onto Truce Omega property, and then into the clutches of the learning establishment.

Joey threw a bemused glance at the newcomer. "You're weird, you know that?"

Closing the rhetoric to response, Joey hooked the scruff of Crono's shirt and led him around the corner.

"Com'on, let's get to class."

* * *

After twenty-six minutes of life on the floor, the attribute of Miss Missy's classroom that best-defined Crono's mood was debatable, although it was assuredly something insipid.

Since the electrical fixtures declined to illuminate, he lazily watched the afternoon's warm glow permeate through the clamped window blinds and devour the room in misty light and bleary shadow. His arms shaped to be suitable pillows, suspending the boy's leonine mane off some itchy canvas tarp.

He pondered the longevity of his sleeping mat while enduring the last four minutes of "nap time." The degree of his boredom had surpassed the soporific stage, and the sliver of cushioning spacing him a hair's breadth from the hard ground didn't promote rest, either.

An astute observer could detect the vanished teacher's whereabouts with a sidelong peek out the glass screen over her desk. The battered fringes of that window's shade only weakly veiled the outdoor scenery, and while stealing glimpses of clouds it was easy to catch flashes of feminine garb, its dark rose pattern at odds with the glaring blue sky.

Reclined into a vantage point to see such, Crono spied the weedy woman's arm lifting some vaguely familiar object to her lips. It was strange, the little one mused, how Miss Missy's "coffee" looked awfully similar to one of Matt's "cigarettes."

His eyes vacantly adhered to the stick of "coffee" and the white velvet serpents that sprouted from the smoking ember at its tip, until a stirring from within the walls evoked his interest.

Two of Crono's restive classmates had devised a mischievous prank for the benefit of Miss Missy's return, and were bent on carrying it out while she was still absent. Billy and Chucky's hench-like sniggering attracted the redhead to their position. They stalked over snoozing children, venturing towards the rear of the room. The young lad looked on, intrigued by the developing plot.

Chucky parted from his accomplice's side and gracelessly scaled some desks stacked at the wall hosting the door. He achieved a rough balance on the desktop stationed beneath the air duct, unceremoniously tore the secured grate open on its hinges, and appeared to stand by while Billy fetched the bait of their practical joke.

A small body was plucked from the field of kids like a rotten carrot and locked in Billy's bear-like grip. Aside from the spooked look frozen in her saucer eyes (enlarged moreover by the aid of glasses, thereby affecting a comical appearance), Booger didn't resist as much as a squeak. She was effortlessly hoisted over the mammoth's shoulders and tossed into Chucky's greedy grasp like a bundle of cotton. Crono privately marveled at how tiny and lightweight the girl must have been, for not a hint of strain was expressed by either boy. He doubled back on this assumption by accounting for the sheer strength both bullies shared.

The childish lummox fumbled clumsily with the girl in his arms. He folded her bony frame like a package to be shipped in the mail, and then awkwardly stuffed her into the vent. Booger's squirming rattled the aluminum tunnel as she was forced inside its bowels. Chucky rashly silenced the artificial thunder with a blunt "Shut up!" and the metallic clunk of the passage's tin cover jarring shut. Grinning craftily, the hooligan sprang to the floor of padded mats and met Billy's palm with a "low-five" swipe.

The matching pair of girls crouched at the windows piped up in alarm.

"She's coming!" Lizzy squeaked, panicked.

"Quick, get down everyone!" Stacy called for evasive actions.

At this, the area exploded with movement. Kids crawled, rolled, dove, and generally scampered over their palpable surroundings as well as one another in a race back to their respective sleeping pads. Flexing his neck to investigate for himself, Crono could descry Miss Missy's ghostly silhouette gliding across the window blinds' slats.

The melee was effectively timed to die within seconds of the instructor's appearance in the doorway. The atmosphere resumed its placid countenance, and became perceivably still as breaths were collectively held.

The door easily yielded to Miss Missy entrance, as if it, too, feared impeding her in any manner. The woman keenly swept the hushed scene, probing for the residue of misbehavior. Once satisfied, she reactivated the light switch. An artificial radiance rained onto the little ones, momentarily stunning them.

"Okay children. Put the desks back, now."

The grating rustle of scuttling chair legs and a chorus of murmurs filled the following minute as furniture was shuffled around. For the length of this delay, Miss Missy retrieved a sample of text from her desk drawer and prepared for the upcoming lesson.

Her backside to the concession of pupils, she started, "We're going to continue where we left off yester--"

--squeak.

The elderly one's lecture was retarded by a foreign sound. She paused, baffled, then spun to meet her students, the last of whom were just planting their rumps in their seats.

"What's that noise?" she consorted with them.

An expected silence rewarded her enquiry, while incriminating snickers hugged one wall. When her gaze penetrated that region, Miss Missy discovered a vacant chair.

"Oh, for the love of..." she sighed, exasperated. Settling her wrists into the hollows above her hips, she turned a stern glare to the most likely culprit.

"Okay Mister McGraph, where is she this time?"

Billy offered upheld hands in what might have passed for a submissive display of innocence, had he not been sporting the broadest grin in the room. "I don't know what you're talking about, really!"

Chucky's face was so flushed with suppressed laughter that he buried himself in his elbows to shield it. Other witnesses were mimicking this reflex in lesser degrees.

The teacher, not overlooking this, scowled at both young men, miffed by their lack of cooperation as well as their pathetic efforts to mask the truth.

"I don't have time for games this afternoon, boys. Just tell me--"

--squeak.

Several heads perked up, ears open, and Miss Missy dampened her reproach with piqued listening.

squeak.

Those attentive ones were instantly lured to the uppermost edge of the room, where a metal grid locked the air vent shut. The rectangular patch vibrated in squeaky pulses as a force shook it from the inside.

squeak-squeak.

Drawing a conclusion, Miss Missy gasped, "Goodness gracious, how in the world...?" Abandoning the booklet she had procured from her desk, she maneuvered below the ventilation duct, cautiously unhinged her soles from her high-heeled shoes, and molded her footing to the nearest tabletop. Elevated like so, she reached for the shaft's cover and peeled it from its loosened bolts, revealing a shivering little girl.

The instructor's relief was drowned by an expressed annoyance. "...Bloody..." she cursed, "Not again..." The woman helped the whimpering lass to the floor, reclaimed her footwear, and addressed the rescued Booger. "Goodness, child, are you all right?"

She nodded hesitantly.

Miss Missy sighed, firmed the pads of her fingers against her temple, and waved dismissively with her free hand. "Sit down, then. Just... sit down," she ordered, her voice painted with checked agitation.

Booger was plainly obedient, and did just that.

Pacing to the head of the room, the teacher further decreed, "Mister McGraph, I'll see you in the office after class."

The accused coughed up a protest. "...But, hey! I didn't do--"

"--Yes, I know," his objection was sacrificed to sarcasm, "You never do anything. You should try to sell that to the principal, later. I'm sure Mister Roden will be absolutely convinced, considering he has your full conduct record."

The heavy lad wilted into his chair, outwitted. "Fine..." Billy muttered as short giggles bubbled around him.

"It's not funny, class," Miss Missy tersely muted them. Returning to the discarded readings, she resumed the lesson. "As I was saying, we're going to start reading..."

Class continued. Having evaded punishment, Chucky quietly praised his luck. Meanwhile, at the rear of the miniature assembly, Crono smirked, discontented with events, yet grateful for this turn of fate.

_'Good. Billy's gonna be kept after class. Maybe then I can git him alone and git back my bandanna. He's really gonna eat it for stealin' from me and makin' me look like a fool. We'll see how tough he really is when he's all by himself with no buddies a' his to back him up.'_

He shot the back of his adversary's head a brief, hard stare.

_'We'll jus' see...'_

* * *

Two thirty-seven.

That was the time as Crono would have read it, had the wall clock he was intently fixed on been labeled in anything besides "tab numerals," an outdated counting system instituted prior to the rise of the Guardian regime. Use of the tediously inscribed crossbars to represent quantities had been reserved, in modern times, strictly for ornamental purposes.

Already lacking a mastery of even rudimentary time scales, Crono found the fancy clock to be more irritating than informative.

"Stupid tab numbers," the lad grumbled as he studied the ticking appliance, lofty on its nail spiking the opposite wall. With his forearms propped on his knees and his cheeks bunched into his hands, he anxiously teetered on the rim of the bench outside the school's back office.

Crono navigated to the principal's room without complication once he recalled that it was adjoined to Miss Debbins's workspace, where at this moment the day before he was doing very much what he was doing now: sitting around, killing time.

A dose of patience was the only ingredient the edgy young boy was pressed for as he fidgeted with a threadbare strategy over how to confront the suspected bandanna thief. His tactical daydreaming was foiled, however, by tell-tale sounds of voices, largely smothered by the nearby door. Their ripening coherency was enough to warrant eavesdropping.

"...I don't know what I'm going to do with you, William," spoke a voice saturated with masculine authority. The principal, Crono assumed.

"You can't keep yourself out of trouble for one single day! You're disruptive, no matter what we do, or where we put you. You disrupt classes, you harass the other students--"

"--And the teachers," chimed an unmistakably perturbed Miss Missy.

"...And even the teachers!" the first echoed, reinforcing his co-worker's point. "I... I honestly can't think of any word besides 'disruptive' to describe you, William! What do you have to say for yourself?"

The invitation to reply was bitterly indulged upon. "I didn't hurt anything... It was just a joke! Don't you 'teacher' types have a sense of humor?"

"I'm sure that little girl didn't find it very funny," the female smartly retorted. "You have no tact at all, do you, young man? It's not very gentlemen-like to pick on girls. Your mother should have at least taught you that by now, if anything. We wouldn't even be here discussing this if you had so much as the slightest shred of..."

A wavering quiet accompanied Miss Missy's hunt for fitting words. "...decency... to pick on a girl capable of... defending herself! You know very well that poor child has problems, and needs special attention. Instead, you ruthlessly torture her for your own amusement, with no thought what-so-ever to how she might feel!"

"Retards don't have feelings!" Billy spat defensively.

"We can see about that!" the headmaster roared at such impudence, "When we ship you off to the remedial school on the west side, where they'll make you re-learn your character charts and treat you 'extra special,' just like all the other 'retards' there. Then you can see for yourself if they have feelings or not. Or you can just take my advice and keep this in mind the next time you want to start one of your 'jokes' in the middle of class."

"I thought this _was_ the retard school!" Billy fired back.

Funny, Crono thought. So did he.

"WILLIAM!"

The drywall was no shield against the boom of the principal's voice, and even Crono shrank into his shirt with a guilty cringe. To follow-up his outburst, Mister Roden soaked his threat in a period of silence and allowed a sensible tone to return to him.

"...Am I understood, William?"

The following grunt must have resembled "yessir," because the reprover sanctioned Billy's exit with a disgusted, "Get out of my face, then. I don't want to see you here again."

Crono flinched as the nearest panel with hinges shuttled open and a disgruntled youth stormed into the cavernous hallway. Impervious to the red-haired one gawking at his tantrum, Billy flung his stampeding gait towards the nearest escape, as well as a selected finger towards the ceiling. A snarled, "My mother's dead, bitch," escorted him outside, where the afternoon's ferocious blaze was the hefty bully's sole concern.

Crono's hesitation in pursuing Billy was catalyzed by such cold vulgarity, and his composure dissolved into an unblinking stupor. The brazen, callous attitude his rival brandished was as disturbing as his flashing temper and monstrous girth. To label adults with profane words, even while excluded from their hearing, was unfathomable in the boy's eyes. Having experimented with that variant in language once before, Crono's only retainable memory of the event coincided with his first tasting of bathroom soap.

The lad's faltering courage deliberated revoking his quarrel with Billy before incurring another regrettable incident.

_'No way.'_ He shook his head, as if to dislodge his irresolution from atop it. _'I want that bandanna back. I've waited too long to run away now.'_

Clinging to that thought to fortify his decision, Crono finally moved to chase, and sped through the building's rear gate.


	7. Chapter Seven

7.

Fit to locate his comrades and desert the loathsome school, Billy prowled along the spine of the building, his broad strides disheveling the chains of hedges crowding the scanty path. Plowing his way onto the lot's foreground, he encountered his usual entourage, lounging against the establishment's shingled face.

Darren warily detached from the wall and greeted him. "Hey. We waited for ya," he explained, feeling obliged to supply an excuse for their presence.

"So, uhm..." Chucky cleared his throat, his expression faintly apologetic, "...How'd it go?"

Billy snorted contumeliously. "As usual. Those grown-ups don't have a clue." Impulsively craving violence, he pumped his hand hungrily and wondered, "Where's Boogs? I wanna vent some anger."

"Hey, wait!" issued from the mowed plant-life in Billy's wake.

Discommoded by the intrusion, the trio turned to watch the speaker clamber forth, slapping at the groping twigs and generally stumbling over himself to escape the cultivated jungle. The gang acknowledged the bungling youth with disdainful sneers.

"It's the new kid again."

Reflecting on his need of a victim, Billy sighed resignedly, "I guess he'll have to do."

Crono earned his footing and coldly regarded the sum of bullies. Darren and Chucky's presence startled him, and a shoe sliding back in retreat betrayed this. The child momentarily balanced on silence, his ill confidence impairing a normally facile vocabulary.

The lull itched Billy's temper. "Wha'ddya want, kid? I'm in a bad mood."

* * *

Booger, by her nature, was as unsure of her route as she would be of any decision contrived by her own instinct. She meticulously wove through her schoolyard's mismanaged, retiform bushes in pursuit of the day's quarry: the inherited owner of a bleached, tattered headband. The mnemonic item was twined about her left knuckles like a makeshift bandage, secured in both her grasp and memory.

When swimming out of the shrubbery towards the campus's front, the scent of an impending scuffle triggered a freezing of the joints. To spite an anxious heart, Booger focused her hearing over the pounding in her ears and instead on the banter of an ensuing quarrel.

The bellow of a thundering beast was distinguished foremost. "I did _what_?!"

Blind conviction answered him. "You heard me--you took it! It's my bandanna and I want it back!"

Booger reeled at the auditive input, and mentally fumbled with the new variables.

_Billy... Crono... bandanna?_

"Uh... dude, what's he talkin' about?" Chucky verbalized her thoughts, albeit with a spin of slang.

"I have no idea," Billy admitted, "But I think he just asked to get his scrawny ass kicked. Is that what you want, shrimp? 'Cause I'm in a real 'giving' mood today."

"I'm in the mood for a little charity, too," Darren followed the suggestive remark.

"You know what I'm talking about!" Crono persisted, anger lending his words an edge of clarity normally dulled by a childish slur. "I don't like being stoled from!" he added, a backwoods dialect spoiling the effect.

_Stolen... Crono... Billy... stolen... bandanna..._

Booger glanced to her clothed hand, and a certain dread seized her.

_...Bandanna!_

Finally realizing the magnitude of her folly, she shrank into the enveloping flora and away from the unpleasantries, not prone to confront danger. The mute grappled with her conscience amid the sheltering leaves.

What could she do now? Without a suitable deterrent, the "terrible trio" would invariably donate some knuckle sandwiches to the "kill the newbie" cause. Then again, to intervene at this point would only redirect that order of sandwiches to Booger's plate.

Regardless of the resulting discomfort, the notion to volunteer her service was justifiable. After all, this dilemma was the fault of a stolen article--an article that the girl had taken under sincere courtesy, but without consent, nevertheless.

Fretful of the boys' attention, Booger tried to squirm deeper into the hedges and proof herself against recognition. The foliage itself hindered her, however, and she contorted to glimpse the encumbrance.

A tail of the disputed bandanna was hitched on an unwieldy stem. With her hand haltered to it thus, Booger tugged on the twig an inch, but the stuck cloth wouldn't yield without a greater force. As she reached her spare forelimb to claw at the problem, the child paused.

_Crono... bandanna..._

Suspended in that awkward, crouched stance, Booger heavily reviewed her predicament. She distantly stared at the branch fixed to the bandanna that was slung around her wrist, as if entranced by it.

_Crono's bandanna..._

A glint of ingenuity flared behind her spectacles. Booger got an idea.

* * *

Fending off the sun's harassment with a veil of tiles, the roof's overhang seemed to close over Crono like a crocodile's jaw as he unwittingly backed into its shadow. His recoil was hinted to him whenever a fleck of sunshine was wiped off his nose, and he minded this detail enough to cease his backtracking and hold his ground as Billy and his cohorts encroached on his diminishing personal space.

"You'd better run that by me again," the chief behemoth warned without subtlety, "This time without that part I thought I heard about me bein' a thief."

Crono was on the verge of growling. "Don't play dumb! I know you took it 'cause you're the only one who could'a!" he relied on deductive, if fallacious, logic.

A jab to his left shoulder jarred the lad's senses and tossed him into the wall. As the moulting paint grated against his elbows the redhead learned that Chucky had applied the force, acting in accord with Billy's next words.

"Wrong answer, shrimp-o. There's one hit against ya. Nobody calls me dumb!"

Whether it was for the sake of his own amusement or a rare fit of mercy, Billy allowed another chance for the new student. The mammoth leered down at Crono, an icy sheen filming his eyes and augmenting his most ominous features. "Okay, ya get one more shot. Now, what were you sayin'?!"

A stony, indignant glare was returned. "Give it back!"

Darren, acknowledging a spoiled pardon when he saw one, gaped in astonishment as one should at heinous idiocy, while Chucky's expression was likewise confounded by the insanely brave retort.

The bully's pounce was as instantaneous as a reflex and uncannily swift for a person of such ponderous stature. Utilizing an open fist, Billy fastened Crono's backside to the wall by the breadth of his freshly bruised arm. The timber slates quivered under the rough impact and dislodged a shower of particles that frosted the small boy's crimson hair with dust.

"Man, what a stupid ass!" Darren's commentary was dimly registered over a second thud; this one issued from Billy's other palm as it rooted itself on the wall a sneeze away from Crono's ear, thus barring his escape.

"Okay smartass!" Billy hotly roared, forcing his captive to flinch, "Since you've obviously got shit-for-brains, I'll spell it out for ya. First a' all, I ain't got your stupid bandannie or whatever the hell you're talking about. As a matter of fact, I don't know who's got it, and last, I couldn't give a bigger rat's ass about it! I don't even know who'd want the stupid thing!"

This confession was hardly satisfactory to the caged boy, and he spat defiantly, "You liar! I--"

One sweep of the arm thwarted Crono's words when Billy cuffed him across the cheekbone. "I'm _what_!? A liar!?" the redhead caught such exclamations as he sorted through the stars swarming his vision. "Dammit, new kid," the assailant continued, his tolerance for inane obduracy exhausted, "That's the last straw! I wasn't gonna at first, but since I'm apparently such a thief, I guess I got no choice!"

Struck by a daze, the spiky-haired youth was too sluggish to prohibit his larger foe from violently strapping his forearm over Crono's neck and raiding the vulnerable lad's pockets. A handful of robbed coins rang upon the unquenched earth as Billy scrounged for and discarded items indiscriminately.

"You teach 'im, Billy," Chucky encouraged the lawless reprisal.

"Ack, stop it," the redhead gagged dizzily as he was relieved of his possessions. Some type of warm syrup began to drip from his nose and tickle his upper lip, but Crono dared not heed it, or make any abrupt movements, for that matter.

"The hell--?!" Billy started the moment he encountered a questionable substance in the pouch of his victim's tunic. Lifting it into his associates' view, he queried, "What the hell is this, guys?"

"Um... ew?" Chucky fecklessly guessed.

"Yuck, man, looks like a green turd," Darren related the object to the most repulsive concoction he could imagine.

Crono revived at the sight of it. "Hey, that's mine!" he choked, identifying Matt's lucky rock.

Billy turned a skeptical grimace on him. "You keep crap in your pocket, newbie?"

Ignoring the chorus of snickers from the bully's henchmen, Crono cheaply defended, "It's not crap; it's lucky!"

Billy snorted sardonically. "'Guess it's not!" Indifferent to a short, "Hey, no!" he shrugged the enchanted stone over his head, relinquishing it to the sandlot behind him.

"There, ya happy now?!" he appealed to the thief's title earlier bestowed him. "Guess what else, new kid?" the agitator continued, "You just signed up for the poundin' a' your life. You know why? 'Cause there're three things people don't call me: a dumbass, a thief, and a liar, 'cause I ain't! Now you're not only gonna wish you'd never moved here; you're gonna wish you'd never even been _born_, punk!"

Fulfilling this intent, Billy retracted his steely grip on the boy and spaced some air between the two. A finger-snap summoned his accomplices, who eagerly appeared at his sides. He employed them as one would dispatch hit men, giving both a grimly succinct command.

"Hold 'im."

"With pleasure," Chucky beamed sadistically. Not sparing their victim more time than needed to reclaim his bearings, he and Darren advanced on the rebellious youngster as if to pinion him to the grainy cladding again. Despite the unwilling lad's thrashing protests, overpowering him was a mere chore for the pair.

Crono's wits wholly restored to a firm strength against his shoulders and Billy's looming silhouette, cloaked in the high sun's dazzling radiance.

"Let me go!" he desperately demanded, trying to wrench himself clear of Chucky and Darren's hold.

"Quit squirmin'," Billy silenced his futile resistance, "This won't take long. Your head's hollow--it'll cave in quick."

Sometime around the point when Billy was loosening his wrist in the fashion of a butcher sharpening his knife before the slaughter, Crono figured perhaps Joey was right about leaving the bully and his thugs alone, after all.

_'Oh no,'_ he lamented amid thoughts of doom, _'I can't die yet! Not in Truce! I just got here. ...I can't even spell "Truce" yet! I should'a listened to Joey. I should'a just went home. But now...'_

Finally, Billy wound his fist back, his cruel smile extinguishing any vestige of hope in Crono's eyes. The condemned lad hung his head, suddenly stricken with homesickness. _'I wish I could go home. I wish I never moved here.'_

"You know what?" the bully decided as his fist was poised to bludgeon the boy into oblivion, "I think I'm gonna enjoy this..."

_'...I wish Matt were here.'_

"Stop!" a rock shouted as it pecked the giant ruffian on the arm. Wincing, Billy dropped his bare weapon and wheeled about, irritated by the objection.

"Who did that?!"

It was a rhetorical question. Not even Crono expected the culprit--if such existed--to expose himself to blame. Asking to be gutted alive with a meter stick would have invited more promising results. Defying the laws of self-preservation, however, was a single bystander, void of disguise or shade in the barren lot. Everyone was instantly struck with bewilderment.

It was Booger.

At first, Billy peered past her as if she were invisible, his mind rejecting the potential suspect. When the concept eventually sank in that she was the only available human being within range, he gawked at her incredulously, and then asked, "Was that _you_, Booger?"

"Naw, can't be," Chucky argued, "Booger don't talk."

"But she's the only one around," Darren countered, mystified as he was by the notion, himself.

The little girl typically surrendered nothing in the way of response spare an impression of guilt. She distractedly watched her shoes bury themselves in the dirt and murmured something unintelligible.

"I don't believe this." Billy smirked. "This day just keeps getting dumber and dumber."

"Maybe it's just you."

Billy's hard look could have cut stone. Darren shut up.

Turning back to the fairer instigator, his frown evolved into a scowl as the bully adopted an appropriate emotion. "Now I'm just pissed." Neglecting his prey pending in order to pursue more puzzling quarry, he stomped toward Booger, an inquisition bubbling out before he could reach her.

"Was that really you, Boogs? Did little miss 'I'd sooner piss my pants and hide,' weenie-ass Booger, who can't talk, can't scream, can't even _fart_ loud enough to get the attention of a mouse, just tell me--me!--to stop? Was that you?!"

In what she would later call "the second-stupidest thing she had done in her life" (the first being throwing the rock to begin with), Booger nodded.

Billy flapped his arms in exasperation. "The hell, Boogs!?" the mute was shrieked at. "What the hell did you think you were doing? Did you think it was _funny_? Did you think it was very _smart_ to throw a rock at someone who could cram those dumb glasses a'yours down your puny neck?"

She shook her head, not negotiating the terms of moronic behavior.

"I hope you're not feeling sorry for the new kid, Booger," Billy's rant furthered. His pacing would've trampled the girl, had his thick toes not stopped at the skirts of her shoes. "'Cause he's not gonna be around for much longer. And if you wanna stick around much longer yourself, you'd better start talkin' again _real quick_, before I think I'm hearin' things."

Darren, who had appeared beside his fuming partner out of morbid fascination, goaded Booger towards this feat with mocking commands. "Speak girl, speak!"

"I wanna hear 'er say somethin', too," Chucky whined as he joined the spectacle.

The gang floated over her with amused, interested, and generally formidable anticipations, the sum of their imposing frames blotting out the sun. The frail child shriveled like a weed beneath them and her mouth worked like a hooked trout, hanging ajar but refusing to procure coherent sound.

"...uh, um..."

"We don't got all day, Boogs," Billy pressured her failing voice.

"Aw, she won't do it again," Darren sided with doubt.

"She'd better!" the behemoth growled, aggravated by the fruitless stammering.

The warning was as potent as the bunt of a furled newspaper upside the head. Booger cringed like a feral animal and swallowed the lump of terror that had ossified in the back of her throat. She appeared to panic as her eyes darted sporadically over the scene in search of an imaginary, irrecoverable item. Gradually, the girl tamed her frantic breaths and settled her gaze on a target in the background.

The subject of Booger's stare was beyond the trio, and before any could realize its significance, the timid girl opened her lips, nibbled some air, and finally spoke.

"...Run, Crono!"

Booger's words were as alarmingly clear as a foghorn in a cavern, but everyone's initial reaction was blank and numb, as if she had instead ordered them to drive a square peg through a round hole in some obscure language. The event was such an impossible rarity that no one was quite sure whether to be amazed or frightened. The girl was smacked with a backlash of pudency by the strength of her own voice, and her hands clamped fast over her mouth in embarrassment.

The repercussions of her outburst were realized belatedly. In synchrony, the bullies turned to find their former captive courting escape in the dense shrubbery. Unlike his antagonists, Crono wasn't lost enough in his own shock to doze through the opportunity to flee with his hide intact.

"Oh sh--!" Darren partly exclaimed as he jumped to chase.

"Uh... hey!" Chucky followed.

Forced to reschedule his discourse with Booger, Billy aimed a, "You're gonna eat it for this later, Boogs!" over his shoulder while sprinting to catch up with the others.

Crono dove headlong into the nearest haven: the margin of bushes from which he was pursuing Billy not minutes earlier. With the tables irrevocably turned now, the swamping foliage seemed much more arduous to barrel through in haste than to crawl through in stalking. As the boy endured a gauntlet of pricking greens, gaunt twigs and snaring roots, a flare of white whipped over his head, startling him. When spinning about to trace the elusive brightness, glimpses of the three hounds tailing him hinted that Booger's diversion served merely to postpone the imminent.

"There he is!" Darren's voice reported.

"I'm gonna _kill 'im_!!" roared Billy, spooking Crono with his closing proximity. He abandoned his distraction and continued to jog toward safety.

The bully's partners afforded him the role of bulldozer, and with his burly arms as scythes Billy burned a scar into the hedges. He gruffly sliced his way closer to his retreating target, and could barely reach of a tassel of the lad's crimson hair when something attacked him.

A tensile limb recoiled into Billy's face, and with it a cumbersome attachment: a blank cloth strip, knotted to a pair of branches and strained precisely across the path to catch the lofty ruffian at the eyebrows. Billy fell into the white band with a flailing step and yelp of alarm, his inertia disrupted and his vision patched with coarse cotton. His balance twisted, and the bully, the blindfold, and the bushes toppled over collectively with a leafy whoosh.

Crono heard the cry and commotion, but didn't incline to his curiosity's urged detour. He burst from the foliage with a sharp gasp and flurry of leaves. He surveyed the vacant courtyard ahead, and then quickly checked the trodden path at his back to see Billy and his pals engrossed in the jungle-esque morass.

A hailing chirp spun his glance into the opposite direction. Crono was expressly bemused to watch Booger scurry around the schoolhouse's corner and approach him. Preserving her running pace, she swept past him, hooked his elbow, and lured him backwards to the territory's border fence.

"H-Hey wait!" the boy squawked as he reacted adversely to the displacement, but the girl pressed him towards the fence regardless. She bid him into a recess within the perimeter of bushes and untagged his arm in order to pry at one of the fence's slates. Prodding at the rim of the board with her slender fingers, she managed to wedge the plank ajar, something to Crono's amazement. Booger then held her weight against the flimsy wood and opened a gap just wide enough for a small body to slide through.

"Go," she insisted, her tone curiously stolid.

Crono was dumb with astonishment, and his gaze volleyed between the exposed vista of Turkey Lane and the strange girl proposing his freedom. With all the rush of events, the young lad was muddled in his attempt to comprehend Booger's motives. Although he was wondered by her acts, Booger was hardly patient with his hesitation. Sensing a lapse of communication, she tried to clarify her suggestion.

"Now."

Crono stalled another moment, disturbed by the flat ring in her voice. It did nothing to mirror her general composure, set ill with suppressed panic. Her support against the fibrous beam faintly wavered, and behind her lensed mask Booger's eyes trembled with frightful anxiety. For a second the boy was convinced he had something to tell her, but the words never assembled, and he instead climbed through the slim opening and onto the tranquil sidewalk. Crono's feet were firmly on the pavement when he detected a meek, "Thank you," and a wobble as the fence fitted itself whole again.

He whirled to find the face of his Samaritan, but only met the vapid countenance of the fence. He scratched at its steadfast boards, trying to reclaim the shortcut, but the attempt to wrench open the hidden passage was quickly rated as impossible by any external means. Crono scoured the wood's constricted slits, fishing for a glimpse or remnant of that girl.

But Booger was gone. The boy, confounded and alone, applied a question mark to her last words.

_'Thank you...?'_

"Where'd he go?" projected over the fence, reminding Crono that he was still the subject of a manhunt. He was instantly grateful for his current position, well beyond the bullies' detection.

"Hey, there's Booger!"

"Huh? Oh you're dead, little girl!"

A sequence of footsteps faded with distance and ended flatly with a metallic crash. Alarmed to that portentous chord, Crono warily called, "Booger?"

Not an echo returned. As the boy bore the suspense of silence, the nature of his status finally occurred to him. He was free. His situation was so miraculously contrived that he could abandon the perilous scene and meander home without a single scar or token of his discord with Billy.

However, that advantage wouldn't be relished without scruples. How could he indulge in the turn of fortune that spared him Billy's wrath without recognizing Booger's play in the scheme? A pang of guilt afflicted the lad's conscience, and a skirmish raged in his head over what to do with himself.

It would be easy to follow his left and take a protracted, yet safe, route home. It would denote cowardice, however, to neglect the way to the right and leave behind the girl responsible for saving him. Crono's eyes skimmed along the length of wall, screening for a sign to persuade his next direction. He looked to the right, then to the left, then right once more, before resigning to his better intentions and falling into a run.

He couldn't realize how that decision was going to affect the rest of his life. He didn't know, either, if he was going to find Booger, or Billy, or simply more trouble, but this was just something he "had to do." Crono couldn't leave anything half-done. Matt taught him better.

Besides... he never got his bandanna back.


	8. Chapter Eight

8.

It was a strange thing, the red-haired one remarked to himself as he found the fence's end, to be trying to sneak back onto school grounds instead of dodging them like the scene of a crime. Crono's return coincided with Miss Missy's departure, which only complemented the sensation of trespassing. He wasn't in the mood to explain his presence to an adult who, likewise, wasn't in the mood for his fabricated excuse, so the fence masked him from that chore and left the teacher to stroll away, oblivious.

Turning onto the lot, the boy encountered the likeness of a ghost town, short its haphazard tumbleweed. He treaded over the weedy carpet and frosty sand, his scuffed footprints lined with caution. The superannuated swing set shed flakes of rust as Crono's hand brushed one of its oblique supports. Still with heat and deserted, the dying lawn yielded nothing for the boy, so he trekked onward.

Nearing the site of his clash with Billy, the youth discovered a green pit in the pulp of a dusty crater. He pawed it out and found the fated article Booger had used to nail the beastly kid's arm.

It was Matt's favorite rock.

"I knew it was lucky..." Crono privately vaunted as he stashed the reputed stone in his tunic. Having redeemed his "big brother's" keepsake, the boy headed away for more hunting. Yet again, he ducked into the aisle of unfettered hedges, trying to retrace his path. It was fortuitous that the foliage concealed him from the oncoming "terrible trio" as they rounded the building's opposite corner and plodded their way onto Brought Road. Crono's only whiff of them was their roaming voices.

"Man, I hate bleeders," Billy griped. "Didn't even get 'er to scream."

"Maybe next time, man," Darren soothed his buddy's pride.

"...Yeah. Hey, do me a favor. Next time I see... um... what's-his-face... Crowboy?"

"Crono."

"Yeah, whatever. Next time I see that punk-haired freak, remind me that he needs to die."

"I'm hungry."

"Shut up, Chucky."

Their noise dissipated over the streets, granting a transient sense of security. Crono waded deeper into the hedges that were maimed with recent traffic. Serendipity rewarded him again when a pale band coiled around his ankle. He scratched it off and scrutinized his latest prize. He wouldn't have believed what he found, but it was soundly in his hand and as palpable as the bushes he was immersed in. Several blinks inhaled it before the boy's amazement waned and he reasserted the capacity to speak.

"My bandanna...!"

For him, it was a marvel to recover, and he promptly donned the cloth with a manner of luck-inspired awe.

Lightened by relief, Crono continued, but not without an inquisitive bug wanting to know how his headband came to rest where it did. Seeking answers, he pressed through the murky growth until a forest of picnic tables climbed into view. The lad wandered around the assembly of furniture, absorbing the back courtyard's pristine quiet.

Somewhere nearby, a bird sang. Crono stopped and watched the vacant scenery while the tune wafted into an airy cloud.

Maybe she left, he considered, thinking of his last questionable witness.

A hushed shuffling issued from the schoolhouse's corner pocket, negating that idea. Crono advanced towards the muffled racket and began to snoop about the building's square indention. An initial inspection noticed that defunct air-conditioning unit and a cluster of bestrewn garbage cans, but nothing outstanding. The peculiar sound dragged him to an overturned canister, beneath which low, echoey sniffles could be discerned.

"...Hello?" Crono tested his voice against it, and the detained sniveling ceased.

The boy blinked stupidly at the trash bin and its decidedly sensitive contents. Just as a cat would claw all the more rapaciously at a hiding turtle, the extinguished noise only whetted Crono's curiosity. He moved to lay hold of the can's grooved sides and deftly pluck it from the powdery clay.

While his more logical self already expected Booger to appear there, his reflexes were nevertheless predisposed to yelp with surprise. The timorous girl flinched at the abrupt exposure and turned tearful eyes up to her discloser. Given her bleary, grounded perspective, a vague shadow hanging over her with a gaping barrel must have been something dreadful to behold, for Booger couldn't wait to imitate Crono's reaction and then scramble to the nearest wall.

Determining that the wrong impression was cast, the redhead flung the bulky tin away with the intent to disarm himself, but the ill-judged toss stirred the ambient cans into thunderous rumble that only exacerbated Booger's calamity. She shrieked hysterically and shrank into the corner like a mouse.

_'D'oh.'_ Catching the error, Crono silently rebuked himself and stood on guard like a hiker confronting a wild doe. To amend his initially reckless approach, he slipped into a sluggish crawl, apprehensive of any sudden movement lest he frighten Booger off. However, every nearing step would only agitate her further, no matter how patient or careful, and a delirious stutter fought to ward the boy off.

"D-d-d-d-do... d-d-don...t..."

With her back to the chapped wall, her hands frantically groped at its geography of fissures while her heels toiled against the fickle earth, as if she hoped to scale the wall in his fashion, or perhaps vanish into another trap door after poking the right switch or lever.

The boy halted. This wasn't working, he realized. He needed to say something to assuage her nervous temper.

Crono's choice of words was the core of articulacy.

"Uh..."

His speech was nearly as successful as the hurled trash tin, but being wedged between two walls and a clunky fan box, Booger was limited in her recoil. She hugged the crumbling paint to her left and whimpered pathetically, betraying a glimpse of the purple welt on her cheek and the red dripping from her nose.

Sympathetic to the injuries, Crono dared another step forward. "Hey, that looks kinda bad. Lemme see..."

His persisting infringement on her personal territory was intolerable, and Booger wailed as if her tail had been trod over. Crono grimaced, vexed by how to respond. Finally figuring that this girl wasn't going to behave reasonably despite anything he did, he trusted an impulse and sprang to stand over her, hoping to inhibit her attempts at flight and smother the frenzied tantrum. After all, it worked when Matt used it against his crying fits. "Hey now, stop that squealin'!" he demanded, frustrated by her baseless resistance.

Crono couldn't have done worse to alleviate her distress short of striking her, for Booger's reaction was enough to give the impression that he had. She choked on her howling, sank to the dirt, and tensed into a submissive cringe as a dawning cataplexy froze her veins. Caged in and blinded by terror, her gaze glued to the boy's and cried for mercy.

The lad bit his lip, realizing both that his temerity only aggravated this dilemma, and that he was stuck. If his stance relented, his captive was certain to bolt away, and he'd never obtain the explanations he was after. However, hovering over Booger like so was obviously too intimidating, and there no answers were to be extracted, either. He couldn't fathom why, but she was absolutely rigid with fear, and it was his fault. Inexplicably guilty, he imagined an apology for whichever offense he wasn't sure he committed.

"Um, I..." he tentatively began.

Before another word could trudge out, the distraught, cowering creature suffered a peculiar change. A shiver racked her feeble frame, washed her skin ashen, and glazed her eyes with a lost, disoriented look. Her shallow, tremulous breathing hesitated, her eyelids flittered shut, and Booger finally wilted into the corner, surrendering her vitality.

An uneasy pause ensued. The boy wondered at the girl's peaceful trance--particularly at whether his conduct had influenced it. He stooped over the snoozing form, and after a moment's stare, the nature of her condition finally occurred to him. Crono reeled back and caught his gasp, dumbstruck.

She fainted!

* * *

Small chapter, eh? Next one'll be the end.

Can't stay on the computer--long story--I'll do my best to post the last chapter within a week or so and answer lingering questions--heh, sorry Silver--gotta run for now.


	9. Chapter Nine

9.

The courtyard was taking slothful repose from the day and its boiling sun.

Crono reclined against the sleepy birch, having found a comfortable niche in the streamlined contours of its bark. Although the air was still and hot, the leaves above fluttered listlessly in their own private breeze. An occasional bird would pause at its branches, take a breath of rest, and flit away on its errands. Grasses partaking of the shade were prolific and tender, like a range of soft green hair. The lonely tree was a verily a serene oasis amidst the sun burnt landscape. Crono could understand why Booger liked to sit here so much.

As the youth mulled the day over, he began to understand many things that were mystifying to him just this morning. He threaded a strap of his headband over his shoulder and fingered its tapered end while contemplating the rights and wrongs of things.

He had his belongings returned to him, which was his primary objective, but in some inexpiable way he felt like he had failed. After all that preaching this morning about standing up for what's right and giving Billy "what's coming to 'im," the final confrontation turned out to be just another fiasco. His courageous ranting dissolved into a frantic escape. All his righteous convictions meant nothing when he was nailed to the wall, facing his demise.

The boy frowned. He was disappointed--not merely in the outcome, but in his own conduct, as well. He should have handled things differently. He should have faced Billy alone. If only those other two goons weren't there, then he would have...

He would have... what? What was he thinking? Would it really have been different if there were three of them or just one? He wasn't a match for Billy on any day of the week. Even if, by some miracle, he had won over the bully... what then? Would things have changed? Would Billy magically reform, and recompense his victims for his wicked ways?

The more Crono criticized it, the more his crusade appeared ridiculous. Maybe Joey was right, in the end: there would always be people like Billy, who lived by coercion, just as there would always be people like Booger, who lived under it. That's just the way the world works; there was nothing he could do to change it. Perhaps that was why, in the end, he let the "terrible trio" walk away without further opposition.

Rationalizing it really didn't pacify his conscience, however. He still felt like a coward. And worse, the one who had to pay for it was Booger.

Crono sighed. _'All this trouble's my fault... I'm the reason Booger got hurt.'_

The battered girl lay at his feet, tame with sleep. Perhaps when she wakes up, he'll apologize. It was the only thing he could think to do. Since the young boy arrived in this new, big, strange town, she had been at the heart of his mischief, and hardships. It was hard to imagine how such a docile creature could inflict such chaos in a matter of two days.

However, he had a feeling that the entire calamity was a mere sample. It was only a taste of something that Booger endured every day. Quietly. Almost unflinchingly, and with nary a complaint. It was belittling and exhausting and fruitless.

It was her life.

How could someone stand to be that way? How could anyone tolerate the way Billy and his thugs treated her, day after day? Did she care? Did she even notice? Such musings followed the gossip that assigned her to the Omega ranks in the first place: She's a retard. She's too slow-witted to understand.

He reflected on Billy's words. 'Retards don't have feelings,' he said.

Maybe so. Maybe...?

They were at the fence, and she was holding it open for him. She looked right at him. She spoke to him. She spoke. The mute had a voice... for him? To save him? 'Go now,' she said.

Crono wondered. He could see it in her, then, when she looked at him like that... She was scared. He found her afterward, bruised and beaten. She cowered at his feet, like an abused dog. She cried...

It couldn't be right, he figured. If she didn't care... if she was really so dumb to her environment that the pranks, and the teasing, and the poundings were inconsequential... she wouldn't have helped him. She wouldn't have thanked him. He wouldn't have felt her fear. In that respect, she couldn't be retarded.

So, what, then?

Crono didn't know. He only knew that, until she recuperated, this tree was the right place for her--just like it was for him, the day before.

He tried to calculate how long he'd have to wait, but with so many unknowns, it was a figure out of his grasp. To bide his time, he swayed back and forth on his hands and scrutinized his charge. The cursed girl was a morbid novelty to him, like a infant bird that dropped from its nest. The urge to test a poke at the fledgling's feathers was almost irresistible.

He tentatively reached out, pinched a fold of her long shirtsleeve, and rubbed the fabric between his fingers. It was a baggy, stuffy thing to wear in such a sultry climate, but it was threadbare with use--perhaps it was cooler than it looked.

It was through tugging at the loose material that he uncovered a curious blemish. A red spot blossomed on the ecru dye. Wary of the stain's root, Crono folded up the girl's sleeve and unearthed a nasty abrasion. He couldn't imagine how she acquired it, or why he didn't notice it before, but Crono temporarily put away his speculations to focus on a remedy. Without something to staunch the flow, it would keep bleeding...

He perused the grasses, skimming for a bandage. When nature supplied nothing, his left eye caught a clean strip of cloth, dangling over his ear. The lad took the end of his bandanna into his hands with a grudging smirk.

"Oh, all right," he muttered as he reached behind his head, plucked the knot apart, and sacrificed the keepsake for the cause. It was more than adequate, he discovered, and after tying a snug wrap around the girl's elbow, he sat back and admired the job.

_'That should do it.'_

As if to agree, the little girl in the grass stirred. Crono was instantly at attention, ready to be unprepared. Judging by the episode prior to her collapse, her temperament could fly anywhere from here. He sat patiently in her field of vision as it opened slowly, like a heavy door. Crono held his breath.

She blinked dazedly into the foliaceous mesh overhead, before discerning a bleary splash of color outside the rim of her glasses. She bolted upright in a flurry and turned to it, markedly alarmed.

"Hey there!" the redhead caught her, albeit with a curbed tone to his voice. He hoped that his dulcified demeanor (however forced) was contagious, and she would catch calm instead of flight. Perhaps it was, to a slight degree, for she clung to the earth and didn't move to vanish... yet. The roused girl clutched the grasses beneath her knuckles with a rigid death grip and locked her widened gaze onto an arbitrary spot on the boy's shirt, having only dared to meet his eyes for an instant. As he watched her breath flicker with the want of escape, Crono realized that his next words could make or break the ice. The boy sighed, collecting the wind of what he was trying to express.

"Listen, I don't want to hurt you, okay?"

It wasn't okay. He hadn't yet inflected a question on his sentence before she scurried behind the tree, as if she were allergic to his voice. Crono rolled backwards in a reaching dive, not willing to let her go without a fight. Matt's keepsake continued to bless him, and his grasp tagged the white bandage. "Got'chya!"

Spread on his backside, and thereby disoriented, he saw an inverted half of girl whirl around the edge of the birch and treat her captor with a stunned gasp. She had the nerve to struggle, but when the identity of her leash registered with her, her agitation melted into subdued horror.

"Please," Crono pleaded, his hold not relenting, "I... I just wanna talk. Please don't run away."

She swallowed a gulp of air and relaxed, finally appearing to heed him. Encouraged by this, he released her and righted himself. It was a flimsy armistice, but Crono would take what he could get. He shuffled over the nubs of buried roots and sat before the mute, his mind compiling the questions that had accumulated throughout the day and loading them at the tip of his tongue, ready to fire away.

...Where should he begin? As he watched her guiltily twist the strap of her bandage between her digits, he dimly recognized the source of her acquiescence: the bandanna. It was this that led him into his opening argument.

"So, it was you," he vaguely stated. Booger looked at him sideways, not in accord with his meaning.

"It wasn't Billy--it was you yesterday who took my bandanna, wasn't it?"

She flinched and squirmed in her place, her gaze sinking into the dirt. He had struck something. He dug deeper, toiling to extract the truth.

"And you came lookin' fer me after class, right? You wanted to give it back."

Her countenance didn't shift. Crono's questioning persevered.

"...And that's when you saw me wid Billy."

A fleeting glance connected with the boy, and Booger opened her mouth as if to explain herself, but the most that was said couldn't fill a thimble. Her face fell away from him and she shrank into her silence.

Crono read these reactions, and understood. It was all true, then. He knew, now, who had carried him to this birch tree and cleaned his wound. He knew, now, the transpiration around his precious bandanna, even though it was a little too late to make a difference, and just enough to make him feel responsible.

The lad picked a weed to sulk at and rendered an apology for the debacle his foolery incited. "...I'm sorry. You shouldn'ta been the one that got hurt. This was all my fault. If I hadn't'a screwed up, you'da..."

The girl withdrew from her reclusive habit and fervently shook her head, cutting the boy's shrift short. She shifted onto one arm and offered the other to him in pantomime. As she gesticulated around her wrapped elbow, herself, and Crono, the boy drowned in her sign language.

"Wha?" he stopped her, at length. "I don't know what you're saying."

She sighed and picked up a flustered pout. Then, making words with her actions, she leaned his way, curtly snatched his hand, and planted the loose end of her bandage--his bandanna--in his palm.

"Don't... be sorry. I... owe you."

Her words were so soft that he almost couldn't recognize their source. Crono gaped at her, astonished by the gesture. Her muted pretense foiled, he thought he saw the girl blush with embarrassment.

"You _can_ talk! I knew it," he affirmed, as if his capacity for recall were under doubt--or rather, he was under pressure to prove _her_ capacities.

When he doubled back on her message and deciphered the choppy statements, something else made sense. Her emphasis on his bandanna bestowed the item with a binding significance, like some childish contract. As long as she was branded with a badge of the boy's, she wouldn't break his faith with her, much less attempt to flee--not until the object of her debt was rightfully returned, at least. It was a bizarre commitment, as far as Crono could see, but it duly explained everything until this point.

"Huh," the boy chirped, enlightened with these revelations. Booger was showing more personality by the minute. And now, he knew just how to work out a deal.

"Hey!" Crono stood, rising with an idea. "Why don't you come over to my house? My ma can fix you up, and then you can give me back this." He tugged on the white cloth, calling Booger up to his level. "Then we'll be even. Wha'd'ya say?"

Nothing, of course, but a dithery nod was sufficient. Crono took the lead, pulling his companion along by the wrist like a pet. In a silent spell, the pair deserted the birch's refuge and left behind the dusty courtyard.

He was almost halfway home when a quirky notion impelled him to tackle one more mystery. The boy paused, let slip his bandanna, and faced his shy escort. "Hey, Booger?"

She blinked at him expectantly.

"This is prob'ly a dumb question, but would you happen ta know what a 'my sci key' is?"

A more bewildered expression could not have been returned. Assured of his first point, he accepted defeat with a drooping shrug. "Nevermind. I guess I should ferget it." He resumed the march home, counting on her following without his steadfast guidance.

She looked after his departing image as it continued without her. Her countenance was burdened with a period of thick musing, and the paces between the two kids stretched over half a street block before Booger ventured a step further on her own. As she made to catch up, her reply was too soft, too far, and too late to provide Crono any resolution.

"Child of fire..." she murmured distantly. "Eto... Traukee."

* * *

It was a humble dwelling, Crono's taciturn companion observed. The new student ushered the girl along an overgrown path that diverged from the main road and flowed up to a quaint cottage with a thatched roof. The insubstantial walkway would have been conquered by weeds years ago if weren't plotted with several smooth slabs of granite, like a trail of candy for a golem. Crono would now and hereafter think of elephant tracks as he skipped over the stepping blocks and approached the stubby front step.

A musical clamor escaped from inside as the boy wedged the door open with his foot. Below the pitch of ringing cups and plates Crono could descry a petite squeak and his mother's cutting voice.

"Goodness! Don't let it out!"

"Huh?" he dumbly asked as the squeak turned into the doorway and sat on Crono's foot. He stared at his weighted boot, befuddled.

"Ma, waz this?" he wondered, without the initiative to examine it first. It was like a knotty ball of orange lint, gleaned from the laundry. The fluff turned a pair amber marbles up to him and squeaked again.

"It's a kitten, silly--what else does it look like? Now hurry up and bring it back inside, before it runs away. And shut the door behind you! For God's sake, child, you're letting all of mother nature in."

Before Crono could act surprised or pleased or anything merited by the animal's presence, Booger appeared on the ground beside the furry lump, investigating it with wholesome curiosity. The kitten glanced to her and issued a poorly oiled meow.

"mew."

The girl, to Crono's chain of amazement, returned its cry. "Mew."

"mew."

"Mew."

"mew."

After several rounds of this, Crono rolled his eyes at the conversation, bent over, and brought the feline into his grasp. _'So tiny,'_ he observed as his hands cupped neatly around its lean middle. Booger tracked the kitten with a blank expression as Crono took it up. Perking an eyebrow at her, he said, "Man, yer weird," and lugged the procession inside.

As Crono led the reticent girl into the kitchen, Booger's head ticked in circles like a pigeon's, absorbing the contents of the house. A vintage loveseat scarred by rough collisions watched the door from the foot of the staircase; obscure photographs floated in glassy bubbles on the wall above; a vase of daisies crowned an otherwise bare dinner table, and around this a skeletal kitchen assembled, like a compressed theater house, its audience of appliances crowded about the stage and its sole performer. A woman, presumably the boy's "ma," was framed in the window that overlooked the sink, her figure silhouetted in the afternoon.

"Where'd ya git it?" was the boy's first question as he toted the animal around the narrow aisle encompassing the dinner table and approached his mother, who hadn't yet detached herself from a stack of dirty dishes.

"Well," she explained into a tub of soapy water, "I know how much you must miss all your friends back home, having to move so suddenly and all, so when I was in town today I found a nice man giving a litter away by the side of the road. I figured it might keep you company until you make some new friends. Wha'do you think? Isn't it cute?"

"It's cool," he said flatly, not intending to reciprocate such "girly" vocabulary, nor offend her with his indifference. He had never thought about a pet before. Marriville was full of animals, but their allegiance was communal; the town's collection of dogs, cats, and pot-bellied pigs belonged to everyone and no one. They migrated from house to lawn to pasture to Town Square without a leash or a law, and ate from any plate left unattended. You could stand on the street corner and claim that the three-legged mutt that dug up the carrot patches belonged to Mister Willy until you were blue in the face; it would take nothing short of police action to make the old man recognize it.

"What's its name?" he naturally enquired.

"Oh, I thought I'd give you that honor, since he's yours. Name him whatever you want."

"All right," he cheered the opportunity.

"No bad words!"

"Aww," he whined, shot down. His furry bundle began to squirm uncomfortably, and he loosed it on the tabletop, setting it aside for later as if it were a chore.

"So, how was school today?" the woman engaged in routine chatter.

Crono practiced enjambment when prompted to recite anything, from a grocery list to his daily pursuits.

"Okay it was really hot and we did numbers in Miss Holt's class and Miss Missy made us read and Booger here got purdy banged up and--"

"Who?"

He rewound to the answer.

"Booger here--"

"Where??"

At last, she turned around, and seeing the name correlated with the place, she jumped in her apron. "Goodness!"

"She's not that scary, ma," Crono reassured her, misinterpreting his mother's distress.

She blinked at the guest and readjusted herself. "Who's this now?" she probed for a concise response.

"Her name's Booger. Least, that's wut e'rybody calls 'er."

Donning a hostess's composure and an adult's condescension, she stooped into the girl's aura. "Well aren't you a little cutie pie? Are you one of Crono's new classmates?"

Before the boy could offer Booger's voice, his mother noticed the girl's painted complexion, and instantly adopted a familiar concern. She gently picked up Booger's chin and inspected the contusions striping her cheek and brow. Crono watched the girl cringe at the touch, but it was difficult to attribute her reaction to either the sensitive bruises, the slimy detergent on his mother's rubber gloves, or sheer anxiety.

"Oh... What happened to you, dear? Those marks look terrible."

Crono had been composing their excuse throughout the trek home. "She, uh, fell."

"Just like you fell yesterday, hmm?" An incredulous smirk adorned the lady as she aimed her cynical remark at the fleshy smudge across the boy's eyebrow. "At exactly the same place, too?"

Crono faltered, but didn't concede to the truth. "Uh... yeah! How'd you know? They really should fix that sidewalk."

She frowned in that knowing way that irked the boy's confidence, and took Booger into her care. "Come here, sweetie; let's see if we can't do somethin' about your face."

Crono's mother hoisted the girl onto the countertop and let her feet swing over the floor as the woman filed through cupboards for some first aid utensils. "It doesn't hurt anywhere, does it, dear?"

Booger thus far had been notably passive, occupying submissive or, at best, defensive postures and holding her voice in her throat. It required a direct question to draw her silence into attention. The woman's nose wrinkled inquisitively as she pulled herself out of a cabinet and faced the girl again. "Are you all right? You're so quiet, dear. Is something wrong with your voice?"

Crono sighed. He had hoped that some maternal maintenance would have softened Booger's nerves and loosened her tongue, but the approach was to no avail. "Don't bother," he finally explained from the peanut gallery. "Booger don't talk."

The consentient kitten meowed.

"...Oh." The mother digested this, and resumed her search. "How strange," she muttered into a cobweb. She at last pulled herself upright and brushed off her gloves on the skirt of her apron. "I'm so sorry, sweetie. I can't seem to find where I put that first aid kit. I just had it out yesterday, too. This figures. Well, as long as you're not hurt or bleeding, I suppose it's alright, just the same." As conciliation, the woman reached into the pantry and retrieved a box. "You can at least have a snack, on the house. Do you like cookies?"

Positive reinforcement, Crono recalled, was crucial to an animal's training regimen. A canine recognizes keywords that signal praise, play, or food. These words are often no more profound than "fetch," or "dinner," yet they evoke potent excitement in a dog anticipating reward. Crono briefly reflected on this as Booger illuminated at the utterance of "cookie." She stiffened and her eyes bulged to fit her spectacles. She had a jubilant fit right there, kicking her feet like a diver and bouncing on the countertop as if it were an elastic mattress.

"Cookie cookie cookie cookie cookie cookie cookie," she chanted, charmed by the pastry.

Like most of her selected outbursts, this generated a slack-jawed stare from the redhead. This girl is unfathomable! What if it was a mistake to let her into his home? She could be deranged, or something.

His mother was merely amused, as was indicated by her quick chortle. "Okay, okay! Here you are, dear."

Booger was thus treated and returned to ground level, munching happily on her snack. "She doesn't talk," Crono's mother huffed in a sardonic aside. "Don't try to pull things like that on me, Crono. Now take your little girlfriend and go play somewhere. I need to finish my chores."

"Ew, ma! She's not my girlfriend." He was offended immediately by the terminology, and belatedly by the way he was so flippantly discredited.

"Okay, whatever," she shrugged, already on task again with her arms dipped in a soup of grease and soap. "You know what I mean. Stay out of my way until I'm done."

Crono grumbled under his breath as he pulled Booger around the corner, saving meaningful speech for the moment they were out of his mother's perceptive range. "You can shut up pretty good 'til there's food involved," he remarked to his fed companion, almost disdainfully. "Don'tchya have anything ta say fer yerself??"

Booger displayed no remorse as she nibbled around the edges of chocolate chips. Crono smirked at her difficult behavior. If she had the power to speak whenever she wished, then she was keeping tight-lipped on purpose. He only needed to crack her code, whatever it was.

"Wait." He glanced into an empty corner, as if reading from it. "I've got an idea. Stay here."

Two could play this game.

Crono furtively crossed into the kitchen again. With the clattering dishes so loud and his stature so small, the boy doubted detection as he slipped towards the box of neglected cookies and snatched them. Approaching Booger again with the loot, he shook the cardboard container to attract her interest. The cookies' jingle produced a desired effect. She inhaled what remained of her baked chip and armed a plea for more. Certain that her appetite was aroused, he lured her into the stairway, where he was sure they would be removed from house traffic. He sat on the first step turning into his upstairs room and beckoned the girl that way. When she hesitated, he laid one sweet coin in the crook of the passage, and she sidled up to the bait.

"Now we can talk," he announced once she appeared comfortable, which was only after having devoured half of her second cookie. A bemused grimace crawled around the wad of dough in her cheek. "There's still a lot I wanna know," Crono elaborated, as if to quell her quizzical leer. "Are ya gonna talk ta me straight out, or do I haf ta give ya more cookies?"

The terms of her compliance were evident when she withheld a reply and fixed intent eyes on the treats.

"All right, then." Crono fished into the box and prepared to barter. "How much would ya talk fer... another cookie?"

Crono threw out that much, and when Booger reached for it his hand came down, caging the cookie beneath his fingers. "Well?"

Recognizing the rules of this game, she returned, "Cookie."

"Hmm," the boy hummed, considered her for a moment, and then upped the ante. "What uh'bout... two cookies?"

"Cookie cookie," she said smartly, and no more. Something danced on her lips, like a coy smile. Was she toying with him? Was she being funny? If so, he wasn't taken with her sense of humor. He narrowed his eyes, trying to interpret her motive (more cookies notwithstanding), but staring into those bulbous glasses garnered nothing but dizziness. His best bet was to pull out a trump, and see how it played.

Crono planted the cookie box at his feet with a dramatic flourish. "What if I give ya 'em all?"

Surprised, she blinked and cocked into a cobra's stance. "Pie," she said, at length.

Crono wilted with exasperation. "What??"

She expounded on its denotation in the most rapid, yet placid, monotone the boy had yet heard: "Pi is the sixteenth letter of the ancient alphabet, used in geometric calculations to represent the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter, which approximates three-point-one-four-one-five-nine et cetera, a value first determined by--"

"Whoa!!" Crono waved broadly, signaling the train of words to a halt. "Say somethin' in Guardian!"

At this, Booger cracked. She threw her head back with a rich squeal and rocked on the edge of her stair step, cackling with delight. Crono tilted forward and caught the floorboards, infected with the same laugh.

"What?" he defensively gasped, fighting to balance his wits without splitting his sides. "W-What??"

The girl sniffled and put on an effort to answer, but her meaning dissipated in another fit. The two shared a long, confused, inane laugh that rebounded through the narrow hall in shuddering echoes. It carried itself to exhaustion and left both youths panting. When Crono sat upright again and cleared his lungs with a deep breath, he had forgotten the what and the why.

"Um, heh, hey..." he tried to resume a sensible conversation. "Why aren'tchya like this, like, at school and stuff? I mean, you would have more friends if..."

The girl sobered and her focus found the floor. She whimpered dully, regressing into introversion. Crono was pricked by his tactlessness as the probable cause happened in his mind.

"Oh yeah... Billy, 'n them."

A spoken purr broke into their somber circle as a little cat squirmed up the blocky steps to find its master. Its progress was caught when it hitched a wily claw on a renegade strip of white cloth. Booger gently plucked it free then automatically related the albino stripe to the purpose of her visit.

"Oh..." She clutched her elbow, at once ashamed for retaining what was not hers. She meekly glanced up at the boy, trying to piece together a complete thought to offer him.

"Keep it," Crono finally said, something that impressed her. Having already inferred its sentimental value through his tenacious defense of it, she felt privileged to be trusted with the headband. "But I wan'it back as soon as yer done wid it, ya hear?" he stated his condition, still as possessive over the bandanna as ever. Booger nodded willingly, accepting his terms.

Seeking a more amiable topic, Crono patted the wood before him invitingly, trying to coax the kitten into his reach. "Here, kitty kitty." Booger parroted his call and took the kitten into her lap, stroking its downy coat.

"Hey, no fair," the boy objected. "He can't like you before he likes me--he's my cat. Here, kitty," he insisted. It refused to give up Booger's tender affection, however, and splayed itself over her crossed ankles. The girl feebly stuck out her tongue, flouting the pet owner's dignity.

"Hey!"

"What... will you... name it?" Booger's voice caught up with her in time to deflect any assault.

"Huh?" The boy shrugged. "Hadn't thought none on that yet. Maybe somethin' cool, like that knight we were readin' 'bout in class. Ya know, that frog guy."

"A cat named frog?"

"Eh?" After having it spelled out to him, the notion lost its appeal. "Yeah, yer right, that sounds stupid." A light flipped on behind his eyes. "Hey wait! Wut about Cyrus? He was the coolest knight ever. I can name him Cyrus! Yeah..." the boy grinned, approving his own idea.

"Hehe." She slouched over the bundle of fur, cooing into it, "Cyrus... Cyrus! Kitty kitty."

As she entertained his cat, Crono smiled at his fortune. Overall, this day was pretty good, he decided. He didn't get the daylights beat out of him, he got his bandanna back (sorta), he got a pet, and named it, and...

"Hey wait, I forgot! I'd been, uh, meanin' ta ask."

Booger loaned him her ears.

"Uh, yer name ain't really 'Booger,' is it? 'Cause, uh, tha'd be really weird if yer parents really did think ta name their kid somethin' stupid like that."

She emitted some bashful whisper and glanced away again, making the boy wonder if he had struck the wrong question again. He floundered to amend it.

"Uh, not that yer name is stupid, or anything. I mean, it's okay if ya don't wanna tell me, or nothin', I wuz just curious, iz'all--"

Without lifting her chin, she strongly shook her head, dispelling his insecurity. "Um... It's okay. ...No."

"No, what?"

"Um, Booger... It isn't..."

"Ain't yer real name?" he finished her sentence. "Thin wut is it?"

Booger mumbled something into the wall.

"Eh?" Crono inched closer, prying into her personal space. Was she turning red? He couldn't be positive--her hair fell over the side of her face like a shade. "Com'on, I promise I won't tell nobody."

She bit her lip, met his gaze--she _was_ blushing!--and then spoke. "Lucca."

"Lucca?" he echoed. She nodded. "Huh. That ain't a bad name at all. Kinda weird-soundin', but..."

The girl pouted indignantly. Crono supplied an affable grin. "Just kiddin'! I like it."

She wiggled in her place, shrugging off the miscall, and grinned shyly back at him.

Yep, today wasn't so bad at all.

Perhaps he couldn't battle the world's injustices, Crono concluded, but he could at least make a difference for one person. He decided, then, that Billy would never bother "Booger" again, as long as he could help it. So what if he got "blacklisted"? He wasn't going to let it mean anything to him. He just hoped that Joey and the others would understand...

"Ya know what, Lucca? I think yer gonna be the weirdest friend I ever had."

He had no idea.

-- (1-22-04: FIN) --

Welp, that's all, folks. I hope everyone who took out time to read this wasn't wholly disappointed, and I'm truly grateful to everyone who left a review. Now someone else's fic can hog the top of the list, haha.

So, what? Billy gets away scot-free? Yeah, looks that way, for now. That's life--it's full of pricks. And what about that angel? And the "Mii Sci Kee"? And that book Lara mentioned? Heh, like I stated before, this is really only the beginning. Truth be told, I have considered continuing this particular fic with a second part (it would take place about five years later, in the same setting, so Crono and co. would be... what? Twelve?), but I've decided to keep that little sub-plot in my head for now. That way, I'll leave myself something to come back and work on in the event I hit writer's block... or something, while working on TPC. Until that fateful day, this will probably the be last anyone'll see of Joey, Billy, and the gang of Truce Omega, but I'm eager to move on in the "grand scheme of things."

Don't forget: if you haven't looked at the review page yet, you should check out some of the authors who were so very considerate as to critique my work. Some good stuff is to be found that way. Yep.

Xyn: Hi there! Haven't heard from ye in a while--I can't thank you enough for your encouragement when I started posting this fic--I hope you're still working on "The Stone, the Wind, and the Dreams," by the way.

Silver: NOW I can answer your questions. :-P  
1) Yep--No more seven-year-olds.  
2) Crono/Lucca?  
Heh... if you're willing, follow the Phoenix and see for yourself.

The next story will be called "Awakening the Hero," and it takes place after the events in CT. I can't decide if I'll be posting it in the CT section or not (since there will be crossover elements introduced), so... if anyone becomes interested in keeping up with things (not that I'd blame you if you didn't), check in on my profile once in a while to find the next fic... whenever/wherever I'll end up posting it, heh.

Anyway, thanks again to everyone for reading/commenting. I'd like to think I learned a lot, and hopefully my writing will improve for the next story. I'm being optimistic.

Until later...

-the neiphiti dragon


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